AM3 Board with PCIe x8?

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Limp Gawd
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Jan 29, 2011
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349
Hello

are there any decent motherboards for AM3 featuring one or two PCIe x8 that support a later upgrade with a SAS-controller?

Most AM3-boards seem to have dozens of legacy PCI-ports and multiple PCIe x16/PEG slots that are not guaranteed to work with standard x8 cards.

Are x8 PCIe slots a server/enterprise feature? Im looking for a SB850 consumer board around 100$/EUR.

Any advice? Thanks.
 
PCI-express x16 should be fine for a PCIe x8 HBA. I'm running my two USAS-L8i that way. :)
 
But it would be nice to find an AM3 board with that x16 split across two x8s (or even an x8, x4, x4) for expansion.
 
Don't most boards support that? For example if they have two PCI-express x16 slots, you can use it in 16 - 0 config (disabling the second slot) or when a second card is inserted it operates at 8 - 8. I believe that works with the AMD chipsets; though i guess it is BIOS/motherboard dependent.
 
Not what I meant (well, not exactly). I was suggesting that there be no x16 slots at all and split the lanes up onto more x8/x4 connectors. x16 slots are only useful for the highest performance graphics cards anyway...and most of the folks reading this particular forum don't use those on their data storage servers.
 
And it seems a lot of boards use x16 physical connectors when they're x8 or even x4 electrically. Probably more cost effective to use the x16 connector rather than keeping x4 and x8 connectors set up for manufacturing.
 
they use the x16 slots because you can fit a x16 card in a x8 slot when you are using SLI or Crossfire.
 
890FX boards have what like 40 lanes? Not hard to find boards that are full 16/16 and can split into something like 16/8/8 or 8/8/8/8.

Not going to find anything with an actual 8x physical slot though.
 
jamesrb said:
890FX boards have what like 40 lanes? Not hard to find boards that are full 16/16 and can split into something like 16/8/8 or 8/8/8/8.

Not going to find anything with an actual 8x physical slot though.
Click to expand...

Exactly, and all of those slots, though mechanically 16x can easily run 8x, 4x, and 1x cards just as well.

The only boards that are truly going to feature 8x slots are server-grade motherboards since most consumer devices run on 16x, 4x, or 1x.
 
this is what I am running my "server" on with 2 HBA cards
Click to expand...

So you put 2x HBAs in those two PCIe x16/PEG slots and it is just working fine, no BIOS bitching about the card not being video cards or something? The first card operating at x8, the second at x4?
 
Most mobos will work just fine in this scenario. Even the second system in my sig has a single PCI-E 16x slot which I have running an Intel NIC PCI-E 1x. The BIOS never complain.

I think the only boards that ever had a problem with this were the original PCI-E 1.0 boards with an SLI-card which had to be arranged physically and manually.

Since about 2005/6 almost all mobos are capable of this and even most of the old school ones are as well.
 
It's usually on the boards without their own on-board motherboard graphics that complain about the 1st PCIe x16 slot not having a video card. Server oriented boards might be the exception if they support having a serial terminal connected and are configured to run in headless mode. Otherwise a desktop-grade board is going to need some sort of video card installed so it can show you the boot process. Whether or not they require that card to be in the x16 slot varies between vendors.
 
I ran plenty systems without any video card at all (yes it would beep at POST, but then continue booting). So that doesn't have to be the case for all motherboards without onboard video (or when disabled as well).
 
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