Looking for a quiet S939 board with RAID5 support.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 3:10 am

I want to upgrade my current A64 system to an Athlon 64 X2 and RAID5. My current AGP board doesn’t support RAID5 and I’m assuming that I’ll need a PCIe board to gain RAID5 support. I don’t mind buying an AGP board if it has the right features though. There doesn’t seem to be that many PCIe boards supporting RAID5 for some reason. The best looking candidate from the perspective of off the shelf silence is the Asus A8N-SLI Premium. But since I want to mate it with an Antec P150, that is probably not a good idea, as I’m not clear on whether the Neo HE is now fully compatible with the A8N; I’m waiting for Antec to reply to a query on this. I could use my Seasonic with the P150 & sell the Neo HE, but do I want the hassle of selling something that might turn out to be faulty!

Are there any other S939 boards that support RAID5 and are Silence Friendly? I don’t mind replacing the NB fan if needed, but not if it’s a major hassle. I will be using a single low power graphics card in the system. It will need Firewire, support Speedfan (preferably multiple fans), work with CrystalCPUID, S/PDif out, Cool ‘n’ Quiet support; SATA2 & Gigabit LAN are a bonus.

Tibors · Post by **Tibors** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 3:27 am

Have you seen this post:
http://forums.silentpcreview.com/viewto ... 704#244704

And the discussion why RAID 5 on a mobo is not really optimal in the rest of that thread.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 3:40 am

Thanks for the link.
I've researched the topic already and I'm already using 3 Samsungs, so at this point it's just a matter of which MB to use.
Although, I'm put off by the NVidia 4 SLI power consumption and there doesn't seem to be an obvious candidate for the job. Only the SLI boards support RAID5 with AMD chips.
If an obvious candidate doesn't materialise I might just wait for AM2 or even Conroe; I'm a fan of Intel chipsets anway.

ozdoc · Post by **ozdoc** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 5:05 am

Although, I'm put off by the NVidia 4 SLI power consumption and there doesn't seem to be an obvious candidate for the job. Only the SLI boards support RAID5 with AMD chips.

Not entirely true. What about A8N-VM CSM. = nforce 430 chipset.
Supports RAID 5. Gigabit LANx2,. Firewire. Passive chipset heatsink. PCIe board, but also has onboard dual graphics (VGA / DVI) if gaming is not your thing. Digital audio out, but not sure if its S/PDif or coaxial. Also, its considerably cheaper than SLI Premium.
Yes, its still an ASUS A8N, but if you insist on a P150/Neo model 0511 or newer - you should be OK.

My only concern with this board would be with what CPU cooler you would be using. This is a MATX board, and CPU socket is a bit closer to the PSU than that you'd find on a ATX board. I'm not sure if a Ninja would fit.

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 5:45 am

Thanks. I looked at that model and I thought it was ‘The One’, but it seems to have issues:

No S/Pdif on back panel
Q-Fan supports 1 fan only (which usually means Speedfan can control 1 also)
Problems reported with audio.
Problems reported generally with this chipset (not sure how serious this is)
No Serial Port on back panel (I update my PVR with that).

Asus have pulled this from their website for some reason and there just seems to be enough niggles to make it seem a risky venture.
I just sourced a back panel for the S/Pdif and it will cost 25% of the cost of the board, which is annoying. Can probably get a generic one cheaper on eBay no doubt.