When chipsets will get better ...

[swordfish1]

I wonder, when chipsets will start featuring like 12-16 SATA drives support ... I am bloody bored by this patheric 4 drives ... given that 250 gig drive cost like R600, it is not that extraodinaly to put more than 4 drives in a single PC, yet most of the PCs come with only 4 connectors ... even more annoying is that if you have 8 connectors (some top-end boards do), they are on two separate controlers so you can't make them part of the same RAID configuration ...

I also find useful to have more than one sound card, maybe 2 or even 3, yet no one offers that

at least they are waking up with the graphics ... by putting 2-4 PCIe x16 slots on some boards ... hope they catch up with the other stuff as well

 

[werner]

guess i am lucky...
8 sata ports, and 3 pci-e x16 slots (although they arent all x16 electrically) on both my intel boards...and usb soundcards are cheap

but, yes, split over different controllers.

intel 965 will drop pata support...lol...then go try find a sata optical drive that isnt sold at a huge markup

 

[swordfish1]

guess i am lucky...
8 sata ports, and 3 pci-e x16 slots (although they arent all x16 electrically) on both my intel boards...and usb soundcards are cheap

but, yes, split over different controllers.

intel 965 will drop pata support...lol...then go try find a sata optical drive that isnt sold at a huge markup

which board are you using with 3 pci-e x16?

I think 4 SATA is terrible few, without using them for opticals, they are just not enough, no idea what I will do if the optical drives were SATA! Before SATA most boards had at least 4 IDE connectors x 2 devices for 8 devices in total, now they moved back with SATA to 4 devices I am looking for 12-16 on the same controler, so you can configure them as you please ... hope they wake up, how they expect us to buy more hard drives, if they do not provide enough connectors!

 

[werner]

intel 975xbx has 3 pcie x16 physical slots (1 x 16 electrical, 1 x 8 electrical, and 1 x4 electrical)
perfect for crossfire+ati physics card if that ever materialises
http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d975xbx/index.htm

of course, getting a pci/pci-e sata controller card owuld nullify most of the hassles, and they are pretty cheap...4 port cards are around £30, but you can get 16 port cards already, just not exactly "cheap"
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=147799 for those with deep pockets.

of course, you also have the option of adding drives externally, via usb or firewire...I have seen usb-->sata adaptors although my googling is lacking right now.

 

[ShockG]

It doesn't make sense to have 12-16 drives on a single system unless you're running a server, in which case add on cards are available.
Its not a matter of putting more connectors on the board. There's a reason why boards offer mostly 4 connections per controller. It is far more technical than anyone on this board can explain (I myself have no idea either )

Motherboard manufacturers can't carry the cost of you buying 12 small hardrives when 4x 750GB hard drives will do the job! Also its not motherboard IHV's business to sell hard drives. (12x250GB drives give 3TB while it would only take 4 750 drives to do the same)

Also, only a few select boards had 4xIDE connectors as in 2 per chnnel for 8 drives.
I've owened a number of high end boards and the most I can remember were the Gigabyte boards with 3 connectors for 6 drives. All others (including accalimed NF7-S v2.0) had 2 for four drives.
To power 12-16 drives would require more power than a 1KW PSU could put out, generate more heat than any retail consumer case could handle, also there would be no space to put the drives and lastly would be a nightmare for the BIOS and controller to deal with.

Even not looking at it from a technical stand point, it would be a rather VIA like idea (in essence a rubbish idea!) to do such a thing.
If every controller can only handle 4 drives, for 16 drives you'd need 4 controllers, 4 times the ground points, data points, data paths, and four times the scheduling! And it'd be at least 3X the cost for motherboard IHV's (assuming they get the 4thone free*). Which would translate into a board like the DFI SLi Expert not costing 2.2K this side but 3.5K.

In such a situation every body looses and no one gains.
All this when 12~16 drives can be had buy buying a server getting an expansion card(s)?

8 is more than enough for me thanks!

 

[Toxin]

I think 4 SATA is terrible few, without using them for opticals, they are just not enough, no idea what I will do if the optical drives were SATA!

Give it another 3-6 months and they'll be here. BenQ already have one in the works.

4 SATA really is too few. That might be the deciding factor for me to upgrade to AM2 or Conroe at the end of the year. If I'm running two 80Gigs in Raid0 with two storage drives and two DVD-RW, I'll need 6 SATA.