6 PCI with ethernet, 2 COM, firewire, AMD mobos?

[Muse]

My current mobos support AMD Athlons (I have a 1.2 GHz and 1700+), but I'm running out of PCI slots. If I could get a mobo with NIC and firewire built in, I'd save two slots. I need 3 COM ports, so one's not enough. I doubt I'll find a mobo with 3 COM ports, so I'll settle for two and either swap or get a USB to Serial adaptor or a docking station.

My current RAM is:

Crucial/Samsung Original PC2700 512 MB DDR (in one system, MSI KT3 Ultra2)

and

2 x 256 MB Crucial DDR ECC PC2100 266 RAM (in my other system, Epox 8K7A)

I'd actually like to have more than 4 IDE devices, and I'm running a PCI controller card now. My PCI slots are currently:

Soundcard
IDE controller card
NIC
Firewire
HDTV card
HDTV card daughterboard

I want to put a heatpipe on my videocard and that will inhabit a PCI slot too.

Suggestions very much appreciated!

 

[Concillian]

http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=13-128-199&depa=1

Firewire + 10/100 + 4 seperate IDE ports integrated. Firewire needs a backplane spot, but not a full PCI slot.

This would reduce required PCI slots from 6 to 3+1 backplane slot.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Concillian
http://www.newegg.com/app/View...=13-128-199&depa=1

Firewire + 10/100 + 4 seperate IDE ports integrated. Firewire needs a backplane spot, but not a full PCI slot.

This would reduce required PCI slots from 6 to 3+1 backplane slot.

What's a backplane slot? I think this board would support 8 IDE devices, right (if I don't use RAID)? I figure, if the firewire doesn't prevent it, I'll have an empty slot with this board. I'm concerned that people are saying this board runs hot because I'm trying to build a very quiet system and want to minimize fan usage. However, other than that, it may be OK.

Edit: I'm also concerned that this MB may not accommodate my current CPU cooling solution:

Thermalright AX-7/Vantec Stealth HSF

It uses an 80 mm fan, so it's pretty big. I'm trying to make the box very very quiet (it's partly an HTPC).

 

[Concillian]

According to one of the newegg posts, it will accomodate the SLK series of Thermalright HSFs, but not the Zalman 7000 HSFs. I don't know about the AX7. I had an AX7, and it may not have enough curvature to fit over the NB cooler. You could always take the fan off the NB cooler, which may provide more room... the AX7 will provide some cooling to it.

A backplane slot means it needs to screw in where the PCI slot is, but it doesn't actually plug into the PCI slot. See the pictures on Newegg for details, you can see how the FireWire port attaches.

I think when people say the board runs hot, they are talking about what they see on the temperature monitoring, which may or may not be actually true. I think it more likely it's just calibration issue where XYZ board reads high, and/or ABC board reads low.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, you could consider an MSI KT400A "Deluxe" model board, with 6 PCI, 1 AGP, 2 COM, 1 PAR, PS/2 kbd/mouse, 6 USB 2.0, firewire, SATA and IDE raid, onboard NIC, onboard audio, etc. I don't know if I would especially recommend it, there were reports of IDE corruption issues or CRC errors on the mobo IDE ports. I own the older "lite" model, the KT4V-L, with the KT400 instead of the KT400A. It's been stable for me, mostly (some possible issues with ATI AGP 8x cards), but have had less than stellar bus/memory bandwidth, PCI and IDE seem to only be running at 75% of theoretical max speeds, and installing a USB 2.0 802.11g adaptor seems to have cut disk performance down to only 50%.

But it does have 6 PCI, and onboard sound and LAN. Neither are great though, I've had problems with mangled packets and retransmits and overall lower throughput on the Via Rhine II NIC than I have had with a USB 1.1 10/100 NIC, and the onboard sound is CPU-heavy (software-driven), and the rear channel has annoying analog noise present.

KT4A-Ultra FISR link

Edit: Well what do you know, they do finally have a couple of BIOS updates for my old board, including one mentioning stability issues with a Radeon 9600 card (I have a 9200). I think I'll try flashing that. Thanks for motivating me to root around on MSI's site, Muse. I always seem to learn something while searching around for an answer to one of your posts.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
Well, you could consider an MSI KT400A "Deluxe" model board, with 6 PCI, 1 AGP, 2 COM, 1 PAR, PS/2 kbd/mouse, 6 USB 2.0, firewire, SATA and IDE raid, onboard NIC, onboard audio, etc. I don't know if I would especially recommend it, there were reports of IDE corruption issues or CRC errors on the mobo IDE ports. I own the older "lite" model, the KT4V-L, with the KT400 instead of the KT400A. It's been stable for me, mostly (some possible issues with ATI AGP 8x cards), but have had less than stellar bus/memory bandwidth, PCI and IDE seem to only be running at 75% of theoretical max speeds, and installing a USB 2.0 802.11g adaptor seems to have cut disk performance down to only 50%.

But it does have 6 PCI, and onboard sound and LAN. Neither are great though, I've had problems with mangled packets and retransmits and overall lower throughput on the Via Rhine II NIC than I have had with a USB 1.1 10/100 NIC, and the onboard sound is CPU-heavy (software-driven), and the rear channel has annoying analog noise present.

KT4A-Ultra FISR link

Edit: Well what do you know, they do finally have a couple of BIOS updates for my old board, including one mentioning stability issues with a Radeon 9600 card (I have a 9200). I think I'll try flashing that. Thanks for motivating me to root around on MSI's site, Muse. I always seem to learn something while searching around for an answer to one of your posts.

Thanks, Larry. I like to think that my posts (threads especially) have very good educational potential - i.e. that the issues discussed are of wide interest.

I'll look into that MSI board. I figure there's a number of boards that would work, some better some worse. I've had pretty good experience with my MSI KT3 Ultra2 board, far better than my Epox 8K7A, which is the board I'd swap out for a new MB. Onboard LAN (IF it works well) and acceptable onboard firewire would really be a great thing for me. I wouldn't use onboard sound in all probability. Even if clean and functional it couldn't approach the flexibility of my Hercules GTXP with its breakout box. One of my criteria in a motherboard is just that it function well as the basis for an HTPC, although I plan/hope to use the box for my other computing needs too. Mainly that just means I can get it pretty darn quiet!

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Concillian
According to one of the newegg posts, it will accomodate the SLK series of Thermalright HSFs, but not the Zalman 7000 HSFs. I don't know about the AX7. I had an AX7, and it may not have enough curvature to fit over the NB cooler. You could always take the fan off the NB cooler, which may provide more room... the AX7 will provide some cooling to it.

A backplane slot means it needs to screw in where the PCI slot is, but it doesn't actually plug into the PCI slot. See the pictures on Newegg for details, you can see how the FireWire port attaches.

I think when people say the board runs hot, they are talking about what they see on the temperature monitoring, which may or may not be actually true. I think it more likely it's just calibration issue where XYZ board reads high, and/or ABC board reads low.

Looking at the graphics at Newegg, it appears that the AX7 would be closer to some of the other things on the board than the NB. I'm a little worried about that HSF on the NB, actually. My current MB has a HSF on the NB, but the fan was "my idea." Actually, not my idea but I saw that other people were putting fans on their NB's sometimes, so I decided to do it when I saw a cheap fan for sale at a computer show, WTH? But I figure I could remove it. I suppose I could slow the fan down with an inline resistor. I can't see where the firewire is on the board from the graphics. What you say seems to suggest that using the firewire onboard means you can't use one of the PCI slots. It's not a giant problem since with this MB I shouldn't run out of slots. But I would like to have more because I seem to acquire PCI card! Maybe I'm at the end of that, I don't know. I hope so. Sure can't imagine what other PCI cards I might need/want. I think I'll hunt around and see what other HTPC'ers are using in their systems before deciding. Thanks for the suggestions and help!

 

[Muse]

A backplane slot means it needs to screw in where the PCI slot is, but it doesn't actually plug into the PCI slot. See the pictures on Newegg for details, you can see how the FireWire port attaches.

If using the onboard firewire means I have to sacrifice using one of the PCI slots, then why not get a MB without onboard firewire and just use my firewire card in one of the PCI slots? Am I missing something?

 

[Concillian]

There may be a location where there is a backplane slot and not PCI slot. I have one case that has a slot above where the AGP slot typically is, for instance

In the case that you need room for a large video card cooler you may be able to fit the cooler with the Firewire backplane in the same space for a PCI slot.

Most boards I've see that have integrated firewire do it this way.

Or some cases have a front firewire port that would plug into the header on the motherboard, which can eliminate the need for using a PCI backplane slot.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: Concillian
There may be a location where there is a backplane slot and not PCI slot. I have one case that has a slot above where the AGP slot typically is, for instance

In the case that you need room for a large video card cooler you may be able to fit the cooler with the Firewire backplane in the same space for a PCI slot.

Most boards I've see that have integrated firewire do it this way.

Or some cases have a front firewire port that would plug into the header on the motherboard, which can eliminate the need for using a PCI backplane slot.

Ah, well I guess that what you mean by a backplane slot is a slot at the back of the case that gets fitted with the connector for the firewire. It just doesn't happen to front a PCI slot. Is that correct? What my current MB has is 5 PCI slots and a modem riser where PCI slot 6 would otherwise be. I have my HDTV card daughterboard mounted there, plugging directly into the adjacent PCI HDTV card. The case has no place for anything else - there's a slot opening for the AGP video card and 6 slots, presumably for PCI cards. My other case is the same.

One case (my main case at present) has a front USB connection setup, with two USB plugs, no firewire.

Maybe a different case is in order. Seems like there are various ways I can do this, but nothing presents itself as an obvious way to go at the moment. One person suggested a PCI card that doubles as a NIC and a firewire card. Using that would mean I could keep my current MB and still have my IDE controller card, soundcard, firewire, NIC and HDTV card and daugherboard all in the same case. Or I could get along without the IDE controller or put my firewire card in my other PC - I haven't been using it regularly. If I want to process video on my main machine, I could copy the files over the network. Big files (maybe 25 GB total, for instance), but I guess it's doable. I'm not doing that kind of thing on a daily basis, either. Thanks for the information!!