Supermicro X10SAE SATA port count

[beemaster]

Dear community,

I am currently exploring options for my freenas build. Supermicro X10SAE mobo caught my attention. It has 8 SATA3 ports http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C220/X10SAE.cfm But Intel C226 chipset supports only 6 SATA3 ports http://ark.intel.com/products/75522

WTF?

Also what mobo up to $250 can you recommend? Are there better options?

 

[Z300M]

Dear community,

I am currently exploring options for my freenas build. Supermicro X10SAE mobo caught my attention. It has 8 SATA3 ports http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C220/X10SAE.cfm But Intel C226 chipset supports only 6 SATA3 ports http://ark.intel.com/products/75522

WTF?

Also what mobo up to $250 can you recommend? Are there better options?

If you go back to the list of X10 motherboards, you'll see that in the HDD column it says 6 via PCH and 2 via ASM1061.

The X10SAE is intended as a workstation motherboard and therefore has on-board audio, which you probably do not need, but it will consume a certain amount of power anyway.

For only $30 more (at least at newegg.com) you can get the X10SL7-F, which has not only 6 SATA ports but also 8 SAS ports, allowing for a lot of future expansion. To buy an SAS card with those features would cost you anywhere from $100 to $200. (You can use SATA drives on SAS ports, although not all the SAS features are available on SATA drives.)

Whichever Supermicro motherboard you buy, choose RAM from Supermicro's own Tested Memory list: Kingston recently pulled their 8GB modules from their recommended list for all but two of the X10 models.

 

[cyberjock]

Unless you planto use an all SSD pool with multiple 10Gb links, you should rationalize your bottlenecks:

Hint: standard hard drives can't saturate SATA2.. so why care about SATA3?

 

[beemaster]

Thank you for answer and recommendations!