Sandy/Ivy mobo with 8+ SATA ports

Hi, not a full build thread, just looking for mobo suggestions:

For my next build im looking for an Ivy/Sandy mobo with lots of SATA ports, in the range of 8-10.

It'll just be an all-round desktop / media server. Not bothered about overclocking or running two video cards. Maybe i'll do light gaming on it at some stage but it's not a priority. Just a basic low/mid-range board with lots of SATA.

With 8xSATA the cheapest i've found is
-Asrock H77Pro4-M £66
-Asrock Z77Pro4 £78

and With 10xSATA the cheapest i've found is
-Asrock P67 Extreme6 Rev 3.0 £117

So big difference to get 10xSATA and obviously that board is higher-end than I need. Anybody know of any others for cheaper?

Tea_Bag

what about a PCIe add in card with a cheap h61 board or something?

Serephucus

Depending on what you're using, they won't always work (e.g. with certain software RAID solutions), but from my searching for a similar board for my server, the best I came up with was that P67 board.

Tea_Bag

Tea_Bag wrote: »

what about a PCIe add in card with a cheap h61 board or something?

The cheap PCIe cards use terrible controllers and as Serephecus says the fact that they're RAID controllers rather than simple HBAs presents some problems that im trying to stay away from.

If I was going down that route what i'd want is a pure HBA but they're more expensive. You could get something like an IBM M1015 and flash it so it works in HBA mode but they're €150 odd and the flashing is tricky/risky.

Considering im due an upgrade anyway its handier to get a mobo with lots of ports to begin with, two birds with one stone.

Sup08

As below. I was picking high end not cheap as requested.

Sup08

picked pricey ones...