How do I know if this mobo will support RAID 1?

[legocitytruck]

I am building a budget AMD AM2+ Phenom 1 machine. I am looking for a mobo between $70 and $100 dollars. I will be purchasing two identical HDDs for a RAID 1 array.

Can RAID 1 be used with standard SATA ports? Do you need special ports or a controller card to do this?

 

[Nickel020]

SATA ports on motherboards are provided by the southbridge, and sometimes there is an extra chip to provide more ports. Whether RAID is supported depends on the southbridge and/or that controller.

As far as I'm aware all retail 790GX chipset boards have the SB750 southbridge which supports RAID 1. The same is true for all 780G chipset boards with the SB700 southbridge.

PS: I wrote "as far as I'm aware" because I only looked at the boards available in Germany, there might be other boards available in the US though.

 

[legocitytruck]

I read that some people don't use the built in RAID support with a SB700 southbridge and instead install windows software. Is this true and is it more reliable?

 

[tacoturtle]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

 

[Mothergoose729]

Software RAID isn't really RAID. I supposed in RAID 1 it doesn't make a difference, but I think you would loose out on the read benefits of a true RAID 1 configuration. Any board that supports a RAID chipset probably supports RAID 1. If you want quality RAID chipsets then an intel board is likely better... but the price will be a little higher and you have a phenom CPU anyway. I think this will fit your budget:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813128379