cheapest PCI-X motherboard

[shunx]

Please name some (and if you can a low power CPU that goes with it). Goal is to use a SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 controller for 8 SATA ports.

[piglover]

Unless you are buying used I doubt you'll find a PCI-X MB+CPU for less than $200, maybe not less than $250. Financially, you'd be better off getting a new PCIe MB & low power CPU and then buying a new aoc-saslp-mv8 SATA card. You can probably get all three for ~$200.

[stmok]

Don't buy a motherboard to fit the hardware. Buy it to fit the purpose of the system. (What are you going to use the system for?)

Sell the SATA card on Ebay, etc.

[ilovejedd]

Question, do you need PCI-X throughput? Because if you're just using it for a JBOD configuration, PCI-X is backwards compatible with PCI.

[fri2219]

Please name some (and if you can a low power CPU that goes with it). Goal is to use a SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 controller for 8 SATA ports.

You might as well ask for a well-made, zero emission, Trabi, Lada, or Yugo.

There's a reason why that controller is currently heavily discounted. The total system cost you'll incur to support it is quite high relative to more current options.

As another poster mentioned, you won't find a PCI-X motherboard for less than $200, and I'd further that there isn't one out there for less than $300 that I'd trust in a system where I cared about the data it was storing (Tyan, Supermicro, Intel).

Also, since all the Intel 5000 series is LGA771, there is no such thing as a low power CPU. Even if you could find a relatively low-powered Harpertown (e.g. L5410), the rest of the board is going to suck tremendous amounts of power. (e.g. FBDIMMs are hideous for initial cost, power, and heat)

[Wibla]

Lots of nay-sayers here...

You can find pretty decent "WS" boards from asus with one or two pci-x ports, I have two P5WDG2-WS cards myself, LGA775, unfortunately without conroe support (that arrived in the Pro version of the card), works like a champ with my old 3ware 9500S-12 PCI-X controllers...

Edit: Yes, the P5WDG2-WS cards are OLD now, but they're not as bad as alot of intel xeon based server cards out there, and there are newer cards with PCI-X aswell, like the Asus P5Q WS and P5K WS. These are modern cards based on P45 and P35 chipsets.

Also, a solution with one of those supermicro cards + onboard sata ports = 14-16 total fast sata ports for software raid that will rival enterprice products on speed, and will outmatch them by a good margin on price per TB.

I'm considering replacing the 9500S-12 card in my 3.7TB box with two supermicro pci-x cards when I put in 16x1.5TB in that server...

[ilovejedd]

Hmm, if you need the PCI-X for software RAID, there's the Supermicro X7SBA (Buy.com $215) and X7SBE (Buy.com $236). Both have regular LGA775 sockets and support either ECC or Non-ECC DDR2 SDRAM.