Suggesetions for adding SATA Controller?

[Bloodstriker]

I recently ran out of SATA ports on my Asus P6T Deluxe (Ver 1) after connecting a new SSD. Here's what I'm currently running off SATA: 2xSSD, 3XHDD, 1XBD-RW and I had to disconnect the DVD burner.

I would like to be able to have my DVD burning reconnected and also be able to add more HDD/SSD down the road.

I heard that a SATA Controller might work in this situation.

Here are my questions:

1. Does PCI or PCI-E cards make any difference? i.e. are PCI cards fast enough to handle hard drives, SSDs and burners at their full capabilities? If not, I'm guessing the slowest devices would need to connect to the card - if there are 4 sata connectors on the card, would you connect the optical drives and two storage drives given it's a PCI card?

2. Will a PCI-E SATA Controller fit? My current videocard is a 4870 1GB. I would like to upgrade this over the next few months to a newer 6000 series card. I would also like to leave room for SLI/X-Fire. The mobo has 2x16 and 1x8 lanes I believe. If I go for the PCI-E controller, would the best place to put it be in the slowest PCI-E lane and leave the other two for videocards?

3. As I'm very unfamiliar with these cards, is there anything a newbie should know?

 

[Shmee]

a PCI sata card would severely bottleneck a good SSD, as the PCI bus itself is limited to 133 MB/s. The next question is, would the controller on the card be up to the task? It depends on the card. I would recommend only putting non SSD devices on an add in card, as I am not sure how well they would work with TRIM and what not.

Make sure you do your research and get a good quality card. I would recommend getting a pcie card, and yes, it should fit unless the card you get as the second card for xfire/sli has a non reference 3 slot cooler like my visiontek 5870.

Finally, you may have driver issues, I don't recommend running your OS off it either, especially if you get a cheap one.

Would be good if someone very knowledgeable about these cards and SSD's could chime in.

 

[kiriakos]

I got this one , and it has an healthy IC ( known and all )

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/go_market/m....&_odkw=&_osacat=0&_trksid=p3911.c0.m270.l1313