Time to upgrade my Core 2?

[Bateluer]

I've never understood this argument when there are plenty of capable sata cards out there in pci/pcie formats.

But why would you buy a SATA card for $20+ when you could buy a better motherboard in the first place?

My thoughts exactly. Native SATA is also much faster than the PCI bus, and the PCIe 1x bus.

Pulled the trigger on the purchase a few minutes ago. Thanks for the tips everyone, saved me a little money.

 

[Gillbot]

But why would you buy a SATA card for $20+ when you could buy a better motherboard in the first place?

My thoughts exactly. Native SATA is also much faster than the PCI bus, and the PCIe 1x bus.

Pulled the trigger on the purchase a few minutes ago. Thanks for the tips everyone, saved me a little money.

Depends on what your goals are with the system IMHO. If you can save $100 on a mobo, you can get a real good sata card for much less than that. Hell, you could get a SAS card + lower end mobo with great performance that would top most "decent" or top end boards.

 

[lehtv]

He's only looking for 6 SATA ports. That's pretty much the standard for Z68 motherboards, the Asrock microATX mobo just happens to have only 5.

 

[Bateluer]

Depends on what your goals are with the system IMHO. If you can save $100 on a mobo, you can get a real good sata card for much less than that. Hell, you could get a SAS card + lower end mobo with great performance that would top most "decent" or top end boards.

Err, the ASRock board I eventually bought was 112 dollars. Saving a 100 bucks on it would make it 12 bucks. Even the cheapest microATX board is in ~65 dollars. Significant savings, but not 100.

 

[Bateluer]

Hardware is in place now. Definitely feel the difference just in Windows, everything is much snappier and more responsive. Going to be the rest of the weekend to get all my Steam games downloaded though.

 

[lehtv]

So what's the final parts list you went with? Any pics?

 

[Bateluer]

So what's the final parts list you went with? Any pics?

Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit - OEM

Rosewill Stallion Series RD450-2-SB 450W ATX V2.2 Power Supply

Rosewill R218-P-BK Black SECC Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666)

Intel Core i5-2400 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.4GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 2000 ...

ASRock Z68 PRO3 GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

The Rosewill case and PSU are to rebuild the C2D into my backup machine, since I already had a spare HDD and video card.

I do have one complaint with the ASRock board, though it could be more related to the LED/SW leads from my old Lian Li case. Because of the pins available on the motherboard, I can only connect the PWR_SW, speaker, and RST_SW leads. The pins on the HDD/PWR LED leads from the case have too few or one extra pin to connect to the pins on the board. The important one works, I guess.

Word to the wise though, don't lift that Rosewill case by the I/O hole. Its edges are razor sharp. Once its together, there's no problem though.

Edit - The stock CPU fan looks like it came out of a cracker jack box. Same one they used for the Wolfdate C2Ds, I believe. Runs cool enough, at least, idling in the low 30s Celsius.

 

[mfenn]

I do have one complaint with the ASRock board, though it could be more related to the LED/SW leads from my old Lian Li case. Because of the pins available on the motherboard, I can only connect the PWR_SW, speaker, and RST_SW leads. The pins on the HDD/PWR LED leads from the case have too few or one extra pin to connect to the pins on the board. The important one works, I guess.

Are the headers on your old case 3-pin? If so, yeah that is pretty old, the new ones are all 2-pin. The mobo does actually have a 3-pin power LED header though (page 30 of the manual).

Hardware is in place now. Definitely feel the difference just in Windows, everything is much snappier and more responsive. Going to be the rest of the weekend to get all my Steam games downloaded though.

Glad you are liking it!

Spoiler

Psst, you can transfer your Steam games from your old computer by just copying the steamapps folder over.

 

[Bateluer]

Spoiler

Psst, you can transfer your Steam games from your old computer by just copying the steamapps folder over.

I know . . . but I always nuke the partition if I have backups of my saved games.