For example, at the specs: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813127030
Wtf? Could I plug in my old ide hard drives somewhere in there? Is ata replacing ide completely? Would it be hard to find a motherboard that supports both?
And what about the raid? Would that be useful, what are the benefits, etc?

And finally, what would be some good low cost motherboards?

You could try www.xpcgear.com if your looking for motherboards.

I have used them for alot of my PC parts and they have been very reliable.

They also sell some motherboards very cheap. But if you looking for a really good gaming motherboard, be prepared to pay a good amount for it.

Not looking for a serious gaming motherboard... But it should at least handle sc2 at good settings ;o
I'd like it to support up to 4 harddrives.

You might want to get a more high end motherboard just in case. Because the sytem requirements for SC2 arn't out yet, it would really suck to buy one then find out its not good enough to play SC. But normally Blizzard tries to make their games compatiable with as many types of computers as possible. So it runs on the low end computers and looks great on the high end computers.

If you are building your own computer. I would definantly suggest getting your CPU before getting your motherboard.

I'll try to find some information on SATA and RAID and post it as soon as I get off work.

soo...should i be looking for a motherboard that supports 4 ide hard drives or 4 sata hard drives (why does someone need 4 hard drives?)

I do not think that particular mother board will work with an IDE and SATA harddrive. SATA is typically more expensive though. I'm not quite sure about the compatibility and I think you will need at least one SATA drive with the IDE drive(s) set to slave. You should ask some people that have this motherboard and see if it has any connections for an EIDE Harddrive. I didn't see anything about it on the specifications of that motherboard. I'm fairly certain that you can get an external case for your IDE harddrives and connect them via USB 2.0 if all else fails. I also think there is a PCI add-on card that will let you connect an IDE Harddrive to a SATA motherboard. I think you should at least have one IDE channel on your motherboard. I'm not sure about 2 or 3 though.

Again, I'm not too sure about this. Still looking more into it.


I think his main question is will this motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813127030 support IDE harddrives.

Really? because it seems obvious in the specs because it says PATA!
PATA=IDE
Not sure how 4 hard drives would work on that motherboard though

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Apr 24 2008, 12:34 am by MasterJohnny.

PATA=IDE
I wouldn't recommend that one, because chances are your optical drive is also IDE, and you would only have one available on that board. You could theoretically fit up to 7 internal HDDs on that board(6 SATA + 1 IDE)

Specifically, are you buying a new HDD with that board or just replacing an old board and using the old HDD? If you're buying new HDDs, I'd recommend buying SATA 3.0Gb/s. They are faster, and relatively cheap. I got 250GB w/ 16MB cache for $75.
Also, why do you need 4 HDDs?

It depends on what type of RAID you use. RAID 1(?) just combines your hard drives into one giant harddrive, so two 250GB would show up as one 500GB drive. RAID 0 is known as striping, in which files are split across two hard drives, theoretically giving you double the access speed, and close to double the performance, the downside being that a HDD failure means you lose all your data. RAID 2(?) is where the second HDD just automatically backs up the first.
I'm not all that knowledgable about RAID, so I might have fed you misinformation. I know I'm right about RAID 0, but 1 and 2 I'm not sure about.

Wow I didn't even see PATA listed.

IP Do you have 4 IDE HDD's already?

I have like 5 ide hard drives, but I only really care about one.
A pci card that can connect to ide hard drives or I could make an IDE into an external device? Really?
I could easily see myself having up to 4 hard drives installed at any one time because I like collecting... files... I'm a pack rat ;o
So 1 IDE is only really necessary. Though it might not even be critical because I could always stick it in a networked computer. I'd like to start getting next gen hard drives (or whatever, lol) but I haven't been keeping up with hardware advances for like 3 years now.
So in summary, PATA = IDE. I want SATA for better hard drives. Besides PCI-e slots, is that all I really need to care about? I assume on board sound doesn't matter if I eventually want to get a decent sound card. Or does it?

I don't really care about that mother board I posted specifically, it just had the most spec listings I didn't know about.
I'd like something probably medium range. Not too expensive, but not sacrificing critical functionality to save a few dollars. Like I said, I'm not heavily into gaming so SC2 is really the only thing I see myself worrying about. And I doubt SC2 won't be too horrible resource-wise. I could play war3 on my shitty p3 750mhz computer. My gf has some crappy walmart computer that is worth like $400 back 2 years ago and it can almost played oblivion with like 256 mb ram. It decently played gothic3. I don't see myself needing too much more. Though I do want something moderately better than some crappy emachine stock board, I'd almost go and buy a new computer from walmart.

How about this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128059

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 24 2008, 6:35 am by isolatedpurity.

Since most computer parts are going through changes in bus types, you'd have to build from the very start. A $700~800 computer should run SC2 real fine without worrying about sprite lags. Concentrate on RAM and CPU power. GPU won't be a big part in playing SC2, but since GPUs nowadays are cheap even with high end cards... o_O; Most mobos nowadays use LGA775 cpu bus type, ( mostly for Core2Duo )

USE ATX PC cases for graphic cards that range above 8xxx.
MOBO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128072
This mobo has GeForce 7100 onboard. So you can probably run Starcraft II without buying another GPU. You can decide to upgrade to a better GPU, but this ones the best price to specification board you're looking for. (As of yet...) And, no you don't need audio cards <_<;;
It's also DDR2 memory since DDR2 RAMs are cheapest these days, and this one can read up to 4GB of ram. (I doubt you'll need as much...)
CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115028
This processor, Intel E6850 'Conroe' is for the win for your specification. I recommend this processor for SC2. It's also very powerful. I recommend powerful CPUs for RTSes. Generally, they take up tons of CPU power. Don't expect blizzard to be as low-ended as possible. SC2 isn't like WC3. SC2 uses much more resources than WC3 would.
GPU (OPTIONAL)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121229
This baby, although totally optional, is the cheapest high ended graphic card I've seen.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Apr 24 2008, 6:46 am by BeDazed.

RAID 1 is mirroring, it doesn't make one giant harddrive. RAID 2 is not currently used.

For the motherboard, from what I understand you're interested in one IDE HDD along with a bunch of SATA ports for future SATA harddrives? You're interested in RAID too? Personally, I would get a RAID controller but a motherboard with onboard SATA RAID should be fine for you. As far as performance goes, a motherboard doesn't really factor into performance, it just limits what you can use, really. If you were to upgrade your motherboard to a certain socket, you would have to have compatible RAM, processor, GPU, etc.

For BeDazed recommendations, I wouldn't recommend either the motherboard or processor to you at this point. For a motherboard, the Gigabyte DS3R supports SATA RAID 0/1/5/10. I'm not sure if you're interested in PATA raid, if that were the case I'd go with a PCI raid controller.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128086

For a CPU, the P35 motherboards support Wolfdale processors, so I would recommend one of those as they are competitively priced. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037 or you can search yourself for the E8200 which is 10 dollars less on NewEgg.

If you want anything else feel free to ask.

Yes, I have this. I would recommend it also.


On board sound shouldn't be a problem AS LONG as you have enough slots for a sound card and video card expansions. (Useless you want to keep the onboard sound... which usually isn't that bad unless your trying to compose music or using surround sound).

Here is a link to turning a HDD into an External HDD

http://lifehacker.com/software/hard-drives/alpha-geek-turn-an-old-hard-drive-into-an-external-drive-253847.php

And here is something about using the PCI add on card. Although I think this article is only for connecting SATA drives.
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.3bbce661

Hope this helped.

It all helps very much so.
I'm not necessarily concerned with RAID, though mirroring would be nice.
I'm very much into music and videos on my surround system, so eventually I'll get a sound card. I just looked though and they aren't too cheap .

So far, these are what I consider my options to be:
MOBO
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128059 ($130, 8 usb2, 8 sata, 3 pci-e 1x (shared), can has sli?) or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128086 ($90, 4 usb2, 4 sata, 3 pci-e 1x, no sli?)
CPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115037 (Wolfdale E8400) or
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115028 (Conroe E6850)
GPU
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150229 (GeForce 8600GT XXX 256MB) -- as a temp thing
RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231098 (G.SKILL 2x1 GB DDR2 800 (PC2 6400))

I had to deal with the whole PATA and SATA thing when I got a new computer over the summer. The other one from 2002 only had PATA drives, and the new one only had SATA. What we did was borrow from a friend a device that takes a PATA drive and allows it to be connected through USB. We copied everything that we might have wanted over. PATA is the older format and it's apparently getting replaced by standard SATA in newer machines.

The DS3L does not support RAID, which is why I suggested the DS3R over it. Another motherboard I recommend that has RAID options is the DFI Blood Iron. But if you're not interested in RAID, the DS3L should be fine.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813136038

I would choose the Wolfdale over the Conroe.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3069&p=3