Deciding how to use my PCI slot

[iampaulb]

I have two options really...One is to set it up as a wifi connected server by using this - as i believe the wifi adapters that come with the MB dont work.

Or the other option is to buy a SATA PCI card like this one and make use of the extra space i have in the case. (the case has 5 3.5 slots, the mother board only has 4 sata ports) But I am not sure if the sata card would work within a hackintosh environment. Then theres the situation if I ever move to a new place and im unable to have the server plugged in via a cable. But got use to the space of the extra drives

dilemma! -

what are your suggestions team?

 

[DBP]

This is your H77N-WIFI board? That thing doesn't have a PCI slot.
It has one PCIe, and one half-length mini-PCIe. Many of the full ATX board have one or two PCI slots, but on the whole I think they end up empty.

The mini-PCIe slot (which came with a WiFi+BT card where only the BT works in OS X) can be used for:

• that card doing just Bluetooth, or
• an Apple Airport-compatible (and thus supported) WiFi card.

If you need Bluetooth you can easily plug a BT dongle into a USB port.

The full PCIe slot could be used for lots of things, such as:

• 2-port SATA card,
• 4-port SATA card,
• full-blown SATA RAID controller,
• WiFi card,
• GPU card.

Too many choices....

 

[iampaulb]

Hmm thanks for the options...i think ill be going sata so i can have move drives and use it to back up all macs in the house. Can you give me some links to the better options for the PCIe cards i should look it?

Also i have checked your i3 build the one with the same MB - shall i copy your multibeast settings? As you clearly know what your doing lol

also i have 3 fans in my case, any ideas how to connect them all, i have only managed to connect the two

 

[DBP]

Hmm thanks for the options...i think ill be going sata so i can have move drives and use it to back up all macs in the house. Can you give me some links to the better options for the PCIe cards i should look it?

For the 2-port cards I've been using just search for "ASM1061" on eBay. Then there are 4-port cards such as the HighPoint 644L.

Also i have checked your i3 build the one with the same MB - shall i copy your multibeast settings?

Feel free! That's why I documented them.

also i have 3 fans in my case, any ideas how to connect them all, i have only managed to connect the two

The motherboard only has two connectors (CPU and SYS) and you want the CPU fan to be run from the CPU_FAN header (so it ramps up and down in speed according to core temps). You could put a splitter on the SYS_FAN connector to run more than one fan (but only report back the speed of one of them) but you wouldn't want to overload that header with too many fans.

The simplest and safest thing is to use some molex fan adapters which will run fans directly from the 12V of the PSU. You can use fan controllers to adjust the voltage rather than running them at full speed (the simplest form of this is a resistor in the power line to each fan) or if the case fans were PWM models you could feed them all the PWM signal from the SYS_FAN header.
But to start with just get some of Molex-to-fan cables.

 

[iampaulb]

You can use fan controllers to adjust the voltage rather than running them at full speed (the simplest form of this is a resistor in the power line to each fan) or if the case fans were PWM models you could feed them all the PWM signal from the SYS_FAN header.
But to start with just get some of Molex-to-fan cables.

This is what i thought also, but my molex are taken up powering my drivers. I have this case which at the back of the drive caddy has 3 molex powering the 5 drives. So i have lots of sata power connections free. I remember you can get molex - sata but can you get sata-molex?

Also noticed that i will be able to mount my SSD on the bottom tray, which means ill be able to use 5 slots for my 3.5 drives.
Just need to get a sata pcie card now and some better sata cables to make it tidy

is this the card you suggest? here

 

[Nasier]

I also would like to use my MB PCI slots for additional internal SATA ports.

However my MB offers only 2 PCI-e ports and both of them are already in use with wifi and video cards. I have only 2 PCI slots left.
Is there any chance of finding a PCI (non-PCIe) card that could offer SATA ports and work in a Hackintosh?

 

[DBP]

Is there any chance of finding a PCI (non-PCIe) card that could offer SATA ports and work in a Hackintosh?

Theoretically it's possible, but be aware that a 32-bit PCI bus running at 33 MHz only has a bandwidth of ~130 MB/s. A single HDD will saturate that, let alone two SSDs. Thus it's not a type of card that really made it into production...

You're more likely to find a PCI WiFi card which would free up a PCIe slot.

 

[iampaulb]

I am geeking out right now *avoiding work* Thinking about going for a 2 port SATA PCIe card and setting up my drives like so:

disk1: 2tb | disk2: 2tb | disk3: 2tb - Set up in a RAID0 configuration
disk4: 4tb | disk5: 4tb - also set up in RAID0 configuration but set up as a Time Machine drive.

Then id have my OS mounted in the bottom tray.

Thoughts.

 

[DBP]

Do you really want striping?

• Sure it gives you speed, but do you need that? How are you going to be using the main filesystem? Local access or shared across the network (remember that a gigabit LAN port tops out at just over 100 MB/s, slower than current single HDDs).
• Sure it gives you the convenience of a large filesystem, but again do you need that?
• Not only does it increase the risk of a drive failure affecting the data (the probabilities don't add up, they multiply), but it also increases the cost of a failure. Restoring 6 TB of data is going to take a long time.

Don't forget that the machine has four USB3 ports, each of which is faster than a single SATA drive. External (or internal!) USB3 drives (carefully selected/configured so you're not using slow ones) should not be ignored in the search for more storage.

For example, I think you could take the two USB3 ports on the internal header and using one of the many internal header adapters around (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812240023), connect up two of these USB3/eSATA adapters. That would give you two eSATA ports (needing no special drivers to have hot-swap functions, and no PCIe card) and you could connect these to hot-swap bays at the front of your case. You'd need to tuck a bit of extra cabling away inside the case, but it gets you more I/O!

 

[Nasier]

Theoretically it's possible, but be aware that a 32-bit PCI bus running at 33 MHz only has a bandwidth of ~130 MB/s. A single HDD will saturate that, let alone two SSDs. Thus it's not a type of card that really made it into production...

You're more likely to find a PCI WiFi card which would free up a PCIe slot.

Thank you for this advice and info.

The fact is there is too much compromise in all of the above mentioned options. Looks like it's time for a MB and CPU change, since my current system is a bit outdated.