MB for 3700X with 10x SATA ports

[MiChAeLoKGB]

Hi,

 

I am planning an upgrade (not immediately, waiting a bit (month, two max?) for new Ryzen to mature) to Ryzen 3700X and I am searching for a good MB with 10x SATA ports and few M.2 ports (at least one, ideally 2)...

I have quite specific needs, as even now I am fully utilizing 8x SATA ports and 1x M.2 port of my Maximus VII Hero and I really do not want to buy a PCIe card to be able to plug in more drives.

It looks like the companies just keep removing SATA ports every generation, as x370 had few boards with 10x SATA ports, but x470 and x570 have none (I don't really want x570 anyway)...

 

So, which MB with 10x SATA ports would you recommend for 3700X? Or would you even recommend one of those few that exist?

I am not really planing on OCing it (as it doesn't really even matter), but I also want something good and ideally in black-red (that's my current scheme and I am lazy to change it , but it's not a must).

From all the boards I looked at, I managed to find only 2 with 10x SATA ports and both are x370:

ASRock Fatal1ty X370 Professional Gaming

ASRock X370 Taichi

 

Is it worth using x370 for 3700X or should I just go with x470 with 8 ports and get that darn PCIe card when I eventually get another drive (I would want to avoid that)?

 

Thanks.

 

 

Just in case, rest of the setup will be 32 GB of G.SKILL 3200 MHz RAM, nVidia 1070 Ti, Sound Blaster Zx, Corsair H100i v2, Samsung 970 EVO M.2, Kingston HyperX Predator M.2, 2x SATA SSD, 6x HDD, Corsair HX850.

And the case is Fractal Define R6 blackout and current CPU is 4690K.

[CPUguy101]

Taichi is bad at bios updates i own that exact board but its great for VRM quality, Right now all the owners are having issues with the Taichi on Ryzen 3000 as it's still a old AGESA from Amd for Ryzen 3000 series. 

 

 https://www.overclock.net/forum/11-amd-motherboards/1627407-asrock-x370-taichi-overclocking-thread-536.html

[Mr.Humble]

isn't the VII Hero an X470 board? Could just get the CPU. 

 

More importantly, what the heck kind of storage setup are you using?

[Ravendarat]

I know this isnt the answer you are looking for but can you not start buying bigger drives and migrating your data over? Or is there a specific reason for that many? If there is then I would bite the bullet and buy the PCIe card so that your motherboard choices arent locked down, and for what its worth I just dont think I would want to be running a ryzen 3 chip on a 3 series board, they are gonna get ignored when it comes to bios improvements and support I think. There are many x470 boards that have good vrm quality and 2 m.2 drives. I had a x470 gigabyte gaming 7 board that was great.

[Mr.Humble]

1 minute ago, Ravendarat said:

I know this isnt the answer you are looking for but can you not start buying bigger drives and migrating your data over? Or is there a specific reason for that many? If there is then I would bite the bullet and buy the PCIe card so that your motherboard choices arent locked down, and for what its worth I just dont think I would want to be running a ryzen 3 chip on a 3 series board, they are gonna get ignored when it comes to bios improvements and support I think. There are many x470 boards that have good vrm quality and 2 m.2 drives. I had a x470 gigabyte gaming 7 board that was great.

I'm really interested in his response, as I consider myself a data hoarder but I just pulled the trigger on a case with only 2 3.5 bays

[MiChAeLoKGB]

7 hours ago, SMBGUY said:

Taichi is bad at bios updates i own that exact board but its great for VRM quality, Right now all the owners are having issues with the Taichi on Ryzen 3000 as it's still a old AGESA from Amd for Ryzen 3000 series.

That's what I thought... I would like to get x470 board if I can, x370 seems bit too old for me...

 

7 hours ago, Mr.Humble said:

isn't the VII Hero an X470 board? Could just get the CPU. 

No, I have the Intel variant with 4690K

 

7 hours ago, Mr.Humble said:

More importantly, what the heck kind of storage setup are you using?

I just buy new larger drive when i run out of space and start filling it. That way I slowly went from 500GB to 1TB, 2TB, 3TB, 4TB and now 6TB drive (so 16TB combined). Once I run out of space (have about 2TB left) I will buy a new drive, probably 8TB or something that's good for the money (last time the best $/GB was the 6TB).

 

But I guess I might just pony up a bit more and buy larger drive next time and migrate data from one of the smaller drives... Maybe even use them as cold storage backup...

 

 

So which board with 8x SATA and 2x M.2 ports would you recommend for 3700X? Price... IDK, cheaper than the CPU? Maybe up to 250$?

 

Thanks.

[Mr.Humble]

5 hours ago, MiChAeLoKGB said:

I just buy new larger drive when i run out of space and start filling it.

OK that explains it.

5 hours ago, MiChAeLoKGB said:

But I guess I might just pony up a bit more and buy larger drive next time and migrate data from one of the smaller drives... Maybe even use them as cold storage backup...

Excellent idea! I myself don't like retail NAS boxes, so I like having a PC with the option of a lot of drives, but at the same time I think it's a good idea to migrate the 500gb and 1tb while you have some space for it and retire them.

 

You'll get fewer potential drive failures and smaller risk of data loss, but also a bit less noise. 

 

5 hours ago, MiChAeLoKGB said:

So which board with 8x SATA and 2x M.2 ports would you recommend for 3700X? Price... IDK, cheaper than the CPU? Maybe up to 250$?

ASUS TUF X570. It's apparently a 250$ board for $200. You can get it with Wi-Fi, it has excellent power delivery, 8 SATA ports, dual M.2... the only notable thing missing is a second PCIe slot from the CPU (the one mid board is wired to the chipset) 

[MiChAeLoKGB]

@Mr.Humble Well, the thing is, I have drives separated based on their content.

The 1 TB drive is my game drive & library (windows libraries, pictures, docs etc.) and I will be probably just getting a 512 GB or 1 TB SSD as pure game drive. 

I could probably get one 8 TB drive to replace the 2 TB and 3 TB drives and use those as cold storage... Would probably also want to get something secure to keep them in... any ideas?

 

 

I don't want to sound rude, but I don't want an x570 board, if only because of the chipset cooling, but also I don't see any tangible benefits from x570.

Plus SATA port layout on TUF board is quite unfortunate and IMO doesn't look that good (IDK, those stripes just trigger me for some reason). I prefer just pure black, with slight accents, or black-red combo like my Maximus VII Hero or the Fatal1ty X370 Pro.

 

Still, thank you for your help, I really do appreciate it  

[kidroc666]

I use x10  too bro.. I know the feeling I have a msi ac carbon pro x470 and ha to use a hd dock for two of my drives the board has 8 sata and 2 m.2 slots I'm using them two lol

[Mr.Humble]

19 hours ago, MiChAeLoKGB said:

Well, the thing is, I have drives separated based on their content.

I see. Note that these days you can also quite seamlessly transfer Steam game installations

19 hours ago, MiChAeLoKGB said:

Would probably also want to get something secure to keep them in... any ideas?

Anti-static bag the new drives came in and a shelf or a closet where it won't get knocked over would do it, but if you want to be able to access it more frequently an unplugged NAS box

 

19 hours ago, MiChAeLoKGB said:

I don't want to sound rude, but I don't want an x570 board, if only because of the chipset cooling, but also I don't see any tangible benefits from x570.

No problem, maybe take a look at ASRock X470 Taichi then.

 

19 hours ago, MiChAeLoKGB said:

I prefer just pure black, with slight accents, or black-red combo like my Maximus VII Hero or the Fatal1ty X370 Pro.

 

I totally get it, for me it's not as big of a factor since I prefer noise dampening side panels to windowed ones.

[MiChAeLoKGB]

3 hours ago, Mr.Humble said:

I see. Note that these days you can also quite seamlessly transfer Steam game installations

Yes, I know, I have a 60 GB SSD for games that I play often and I just transfer them between HDD and SSD. Having one large SSD would solve that issue for me and allow me to just get rid of that 60 GB SSD...

 

3 hours ago, Mr.Humble said:

Anti-static bag the new drives came in and a shelf or a closet where it won't get knocked over would do it, but if you want to be able to access it more frequently an unplugged NAS box

Nah, I wont need to access them frequently. Ill probably just have a drive in my PC at all time that will have backups written to it automatically and offload them to drives in closet... I will probably have to find some rubber or soft foam to put them in, just in case.

 

3 hours ago, Mr.Humble said:

No problem, maybe take a look at ASRock X470 Taichi then.

That Taichi looks ok (I wanted it when I was thinking about upgrading when 2000 ryzen came out) and I guess it does not have the BIOS issues that its x370 counterpart has. Will be one of the top boards i'll be considering.

 

3 hours ago, Mr.Humble said:

I totally get it, for me it's not as big of a factor since I prefer noise dampening side panels to windowed ones.

Yep, I like mine on my desk (was fun with Obsidian 800D  ) with nice see through panel (but I have almost all lights inside turned off).

[toobladink]

I'm also going to suggest getting bigger drives and moving old ones to cold storage. You seem to keep moving up in storage tiers and currently have 8 drives, but only 16TB? However, if you were able to purchase just three more 6TB drives, you would effectively have 24TB of storage (50% more) and have half the amount of drives. It may be a good idea to simply clone the old ones to the new ones, and then put the old ones in storage in case something happens. I'm not sure what your budget is, but this is a better solution for the long term. If you can afford it, I would go for something with more than 6TB per drive, but that's just me thinking you're going to run out of storage again anyways. This will again, open up your ability to pick most motherboards.

[MiChAeLoKGB]

Yeah, I always bought the best drive GB / $, which last time was 6 TB, nowadays its still at 6 TB (ignoring 4 TB, as that is just too small), but I will go for  8 TB or 10 TB, as they are almost same GB / $

 

My plan is to buy the MB, CPU, RAM and then also get the 970 EVO (probably 512 GB) and one or two HDD's.

I will probably keep the games on the M.2 and "offload" them to HDD when I stop playing them.

 

If I go that route, I will be able to retire the 60 GB SSD, and 1 TB, 2 TB and 3 TB drives, while still gaining 12 TB or 14 TB of capacity... With the way I fill my storage, that should last me for few years... unless i get faster connection than 100/100 Mbit.

Still those HDD's aren't cheap... almost 350 € for 10 TB drive... same price as the CPU... Kinda makes me wonder if I really want to buy two or even go for 10 TB

 

This video from Buildzoid also kinda helps, I guess it's one of the reasons why @Mr.Humble recommended the TUF Gaming.