Right angle SATA ports :(

[fuzzymath10]

So I got my new SB system a few days ago. My MSI board left newegg the friday before the recall.

I was slightly affected by the suggested workaround since I was planning on keeping one hard drive in my case (plus 2 SSDs in RAID on the SATA3 ports). However, this board is the max size for a Micro-ATX board (the 775 board I had was about 4cm shorter). Because of that, the 4 SATA2 ports which are at a right angle (vs facing straight out of the board) face my drive cage, and are thus unusable

Is this "feature" generally favoured by most folks? Seems like a can of worms for compatibility. Are there 90-degree SATA cables that are thin at the bend? I have like 2-3mm of clearance for such a cable, but all of mine are a tad too thick.

 

[Nebor]

Yeah, my Sandy Britches MSI board came with one of those 90 degree SATA cables. My giant video card seems to make those same ports... not very accessible.

 

[Numenorean]

They are somewhat annoying. I have a case that is okay to work with them.

The REALLY stupid thing is that the included cables with the right angle adapters plug in the wrong way - they would send the SATA cable DOWN into the case instead of up away from the board because of how they are keyed. Dumb dumb dumb.

 

[CraigRT]

They are good or bad, no in between.
They are great with my case. The routing area for the cable is right beside where the cables are bent 90 on the board, therefore running right into the channel and it looks super clean.

I can see that being a major hassle though depending on the case and components in it.

 

[BoomerD]

FWIW, (not that it makes any difference for functionality) my ASUS P55 board said to connect the 90 degree ends of the SATA cables to the device, not to the board.
(although it also says you can connect them the other way to avoid interference with video cards)

 

[bankster55]

I HATE right angle ports
They make em that way so cables dont interfere with extra long vid cards
FWIW right angle cables are avail right and left handed

 

[Synomenon]

There are:

180 degree (straight connectors) - when plugged into a hard drive the cable goes straight out
90 degree (right angle connector) - when plugged into a hard drive, the cable hangs down
270 degree (left angle connector) - when plugged into a hard drive, the cable goes up

Then there are those awkward ones that jut out like this:

I've found left and right angle SATA cables at Performance-PCs and FrozenCPU.

 

[mv2devnull]

Both ports on the angled connector are keyed in same orientation. Therefore, one would need one left- and one right-angled cable to use both ports in OP's situation. Even if keyed differently (never seen such mold) one cable would go "down", so there better be a hole.

I had MSI board (AMD939) where the connectors were still "straight up", and most of them got blocked by longer graphics card.