I want to buy that board but... Not sure !

[zpoison]

Hi guys I have a question,

 

I want to buy the GIGABYTE C246-WU4 LGA 1151 (300 Series) because I want a board that will have the most SATA plugs as I want to plug my HDDs all at once. This one has 10 SATA plugs except... they say the 2 orange ones are "supporting AHCI mode only" 

 

Will I be able to plug 10 HDDs to this board or not ?

 

https://www.newegg.ca/p/N82E16813145163

[DefineOG]

Even if it only has 5 ports you could probably split them out to 10 if you’re just using hard drives.

Never had a hard drive exceed 350 megabytes per second and Sata3 is 750megabytes per second

[zpoison]

@DefineOG, you sure I can just buy X number of Sata splitter cables and will never have a "green bar" or some lagging or delays of any sort by using the HDDs to play music or movies ?

 

@WikiForce, so you mean the board will have 10 usable ports at the same time and no port will be canceled by using the AHCI mode ?

[zpoison]

@WikiForce, also would you be the same opinion that using a Sata splitter would be a good idea? 

[mariushm]

A HBA card can be as cheap as 20-30$ and gives you 8-16 SATA connectors (well, 2-4 SAS connectors, but you use SAS to 4xSATA cables to get 8-16 SATA ports)

 

Here's an example of a 8 port HBA card that's very popular and common, it was mass produced, it's easy to find : https://www.unixplus.com/collections/raid-controllers/products/refurbished-lsi-9210-8i-8-port-6gb-s-sas-2-zfs-jbod-it-mode-hba?variant=6452682063899

 

The above is not the cheapest, you can find the card cheaper on ebay and other places, but for 63$ you also get the cables which are maybe 10-15$ separately. 

 

I wouldn't based my motherboard decision on the sata ports alone. 

 

that motherboard has 8 "native" sata connectors and 2 extra connectors are provided by a separate AsMedia 2 port sata controller - it's like having a sata adapter card in a pci-e x1 slot only it's on the motherboard.  It's not a bad thing, it's just that it's nothing special - you can go on ebay and buy pci-e x1 cards like that for 10-20$, so it's not worth spending maybe 50$ more on motherboard just to get those 2 ports. Also, you have to be careful about the m.2 connectors, see manual at page 18 

https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/Manual/server_manual_c246-wu4_e_1003.pdf

 

First m.2 supports sata and nvme ssds, but if sata m.2 ssd, one of the sata connectors gets disabled

Second m.2 supports only nvme ssds, but if you install one, the pci-e x4 slot gets disabled. 

 

It would also lock you into using lga1151 processors, only 8th and 9th gen intel chips and xeon chips.... with a hba card you could even use a 60$ A320/B350/B450 motherboard that has a 2nd pci-e x8 or x16 going to chipset (the hba card is pci-e 2.0 x8, so you need a x8 or x16 slot, but will run even with just 1 or 4 electrical lanes in the slot) , 4 pci-e 2.0 lanes (2 GB/s) are enough for 8 sata drives.