Hi, I have a Sagittarius 8 bay case that I plan to build my NAS in. I’ve been trying to decide if I want to go with the HBA route or purely SATA. But I’m a bit worried about heating and power usage (+ HBAs in my country are expensive and used ones seem to be very old). I’ve found this Biostar B760MX2-E Pro D4 motherboard - it has 8 SATA connectors onboard. Does that sound like a decent base for the system.
I plan to have two 2x 16tb mirrors in my setup so, in reality I will probably just use 4 sata’s + nvme for boot device. Additional 4 ports would be used if I want to expand in the future or I need to replace drives. The mobo is powered by Intel B760 chipset. That setup should be stable hopefully? This would be just home NAS/streamer I expect super light usage.
If you don’t want to do it “by the textbook” and use ECC, any motherboard with enough SATA ports is a fair base. But Z760 is newer than I’d like (and that goes with SATA ports being phased out…); if you can find “new old stock” of Z390 or Z490 motherboards these could provide 8 SATA ports for less.
I’ve also found ASUS Pro Q670M-C-CSM - that one has 6SATA, is more expensive but has DDR5 which I understand are better as they have better error correction.
It is, and edge connector issue is a real thing. I will have to fix it later in my build - but that means a lot of disassembly. The manufacturer should have added more holes for cable management. My only gripe with the case.
The only downside of this build is that its DDR5 and this motherboard has only 6xSATA - but otherwise works like a charm - hot plugging works. Temps are in 30 degrees range.
The first motherboard that I could find that would fit my needs would cost me 450$ alone (some astock rack server board) - alternative would be to buy 10 year old HBA that I didn’t want to risk.
