PCI-E SATA 3 Card Halp

[CitanUzuki]

Ok, so I have an older mobo with only SATA II and I am looking to install a samsung 256gb ssd into my system. What I would like is to find a PCI-E sata 3 card that will allow me to boot from the card. From what I have read you need to have a "bootable" sata 3 card.

The problem is that I cant seem to identify a bootable card with a BIOS from the non-bootable variety.

Can someone recommend a good solution?

Thanks!

 

[Bubbaleone]

I think you might be confusing a SATA controller card with what you read concerning a PXE NIC. As long as it fits, a PCIe slot doesn't care what what you plug into it; it's just a bus interface. If you insert a SATA controller card that's connected to a SSD or HDD that has an OS installed, it'll boot from that operating system. The SATA ports on the controller card function same as the SATA ports on the mobo.

That said, you also need to consider that some SATA contollers perform better than others. So if you buy a cheap SATA 3.0 expansion card you may well end up with the same, or worse performance than the mobo's native 2.0 controller/s.

As an example of a high performance, entry-level card that would enable the SSD's full capabilities is LSI's MegaRAID SAS 9240-4i controller card that has four internal 6Gb/s SATA+SAS ports, one x4 mini-SAS internal connectors, runs at 6Gb/s with legacy 3Gb/s device support, x8 PCIe 2.0 host interface; costs two hundred bucks give or take.

The old saying "you get what you pay for" was never truer when it comes SATA controller cards that actually deliver the goods. You might just be money ahead to spring for a new mobo with native SATA 3.0 instead.

 

[CitanUzuki]

It would make more sense just to buy a new motherboard for that price.

 

[Coup27]

This topic has been discussed, benchmarked and concluded a few times and the conclusion is unless you are prepared to spend a good chunk of money on an LSI card for a few hundred dollars then you will be better off with the native Intel chipset 3Gbps ports.

The cheaper cards all use a Marvell controller which is constricted to like a x1 or x4 lane which conviently is not mentioned in the specs.