Hi Pete,
"Pete" wrote in message
s.com...
"RD" wrote in
:
"Pete" wrote in message
s.com...
[snip]
What I am looking for is a first class, very reliable mobo to take a
2600+ (decided that this was the best value around at the moment -
please let me know if I am wrong).
Asus Nforce2 mobo might suit:-)

The board itself does look like it would cover virtually all my needs. The
only fly in the pie is that it will only allow 4 coventional eide drives.
At the moment, I have a CD-RW drive, a DVD drive and two hard drives on my
machine and I also have two mobile racks for additonal drives. I also plan
a DVD writer and this combination is why I need a mobo with EIDE RAID
onboard as I can then hang all of these without installing another
controller.

Do Asus produce anything to match this please? I looked around the site
without success.
Thanks again for the input and any further thoughts you care to offer.


Sorry Pete but I simply dont know..I didnt see one with eide raid either:-/

However you can AFAIK use eide drives on sata controlers using an
adaptor... I think that its possible these days with SATA being seen
as 'the' drive interface to go for that many mobo manufs are probably
going to use sata for raid rather than eide.. I dont use sata myself,
I just got an eide raid card (ata100) for 28 quid or so and use that
for additional drives. I find its easier to sort out problems if you
can take a component out and check it on another rig if there's a
problem.. with onboard kit you dont have that option..

At one time I had 2 scsi hard drives, 2 eide hard drives on raid
and a cdrw a cd and one eide HDD on the onboard controller:-)

I took the scsi card and drives out when my psu started to play
up under the load:-)

The psu problem is also a pointer to one you may run into with a lot
of kit hanging off the internal supply, mine is a 350 watt enermax,
usually pretty good, but if you hammer a psu with max load over
a long period of time, its going to feel it. And the really hefty
psu's cost a bomb, 200 quid or so for a psu on top of everything
else can ruin a tight budget:-/

Cheers,
RD