PCI-E explanation

TheCyberMan said:

I have already said you can run the two sas controller cards even tho they will run at different speeds if you so wish but there will be a speed diffference or mismatch which may affect and cause a bottleneck between communications between controllers where the faster is always going to be waiting for the slower card may give undesirable affects.

If you so wish to run like that then go ahead and do it the choice is yours at the end of the day and you are happy to do that no problem at all.

You originally said you wanted to x8 slots and the board you listed only had one slot capable of x8 which was a x16slot and a x4 and x1 slot so it did not match your requirement.

Both of those cards will work in the motherboard you orignally posted in your OP but as long as you are aware of the above with regards to communication speed.

These 2 cards are built like this, nothing i can do about that,and yes i initially asked about 2 x8 slots,because i didnt think i could run my 2 current sas controllers on any of my current hardware at the same time,and thus would have to buy another x8 sas card,but now i dont have to..

The bottleneck wont be the controllers,but the harddrives, as long as the cards get the speed they are designed for,not less everything will be fine..

Like i said,this is a server,so there wont be any copying between the controllers, only added files over gigabit lan, and as long as both controllers can stream a bluray there wont be any problems.

Speed is not an issue, reliability is, i suffer from drive dropouts on my current system,which is why i want to consolidate all compatible hardware into 1 box.

Thank you for your help

No offense, but it was difficult to see what your point was and that is why I asked for more information. You are talking about swapping out an Intel motherboard with an AMD one? I expect you mean CPU and all.

Sure, the Asus motherboard you mentioned said it supports a PCi-e 16 slot @8 and another @4 lanes and the board has an integrated graphics.

Hey guys

Well, you know how it is, you have an idea, and then this idea changes . At least we are all on the same page now, and i am sorry for any confusion .

Reason i bought an asrock mb to begin with,was that it had 5 pcix1 slots,which i needed for 5 asrock sata controller cards as i couldnt afford 2 sas controllers at the time, and because i thought it didnt really matter what mb it was as it wouldnt be used for "heavy traffic" use like games or video encoding,but merely as a platform for my popcorn hour to stream movies,also, as a lot of people use old celeron mb for their servers,and they run fine,so why shouldnt a cheap asrock do the same? I at least bought brand new hardware for my server,and even 8GB of ram which is completely overkill.

I do believe however,that the combination of 3 different sata controllers is the cause of my drive dropouts, so before i go and fork out money for a dedicated server mainboard (which i should have to beign with,as it would have saved me money in the long run) i would like to try and see if i can get a stable system using my 2 current server sas controllers,instead of a combination of asrock 2 port sata controllers,and ibm sas controller and mb sata connectors.

So this thread started out one thing,and ended up in a completly different way,sort off

If this works all it has cost me is 2 new SFF-8087 forward breakout cables,instead of 150£ for a server mainboard,which will be last resort.

As for asrock being cheap,well i have used asrock,asus and gigabyte for about 15 years,and i have never had a problem with asrock,not once,in that period i have had 2 asus mainboards fry on me, but this time i think i might simply have overestimated their performance for this type of use, controlling 20+ harddrives.

And yes,i will ofcourse be exchanging complete mb with cpu,coolers and ram between the server and my other pc.. I also have a gigabyte GA-H55-UD3H also with 1 x16 and 1 x4 slot,so if my asus wont accept non-gfx cards in the x16 slot,i can always try that one..

On a plus note, using my asus mb for my server gives the added bonus of it NOT having an UEFI bios,and thus i can flash my ibm serveraid without putting it into a different pc.

Anyways,again thank you so much for your help