I bought a Gigabyte GA-Z68MX-UD2H-B3 motherboard. It has seven SATA headers. Five are controlled by the Z68 chipset (two 6gb/s and three 3gb/s). It also has a seperate Marvell 88SE9172 controller that controlls two additional 6 gb/s headers. All four 6 gb/s headers are backward compatible to 3 or 1.5 gb/s.
I'm going to be installing a SATA 6 gb/s SSD, two SATA 3 gb/s hard drives, and a SATA 3 gb/s DVD writer. There are obviously a lot of potential combinations of how one could plug in these four devices, but four possibilities jump out at me:
1) Ignore the Marvell headers, plug the SSD into a Z68 6 gb/s header, and the three 3 gb/s devices into the three 3 gb/s headers.
2) Plug the SSD into a Marvell controlled header, and the three 3 gb/s devices into the three 3 gb/s headers.
3) Plug the SSD into a Z68 6 gb/s header, the DVD into a 3 gb/s header, and the two hard drives into the two Marvell controlled headers.
4) Plug the SSD into a Z68 6 gb/s header, the two hard disks into two of the 3 gb/s headers, and the DVD into a Marvell contolled header.
There are two considerations to which I don't know the answer. First, will using the Marvell controlled headers for one or two devices provide any advantage by reducing any marginal load on the Z68 chipset? Second, how does the Marvell controller compare to the chipset controller in terms of throughput and reliability? Also, any reason why the boot drive (SSD) should use the chipset controller rather than the "extra" controller?
Any suggestions here on which headers to use and why?
As an aside, just out of curiousity (since I don't plan on using a RAID),with this motherboard could you build a RAID array across the two controllers? For example a 4 disk RAID using the two Z68 6 gb/s headers and the two Marvell controlled headers?
I'm going to be installing a SATA 6 gb/s SSD, two SATA 3 gb/s hard drives, and a SATA 3 gb/s DVD writer. There are obviously a lot of potential combinations of how one could plug in these four devices, but four possibilities jump out at me:
1) Ignore the Marvell headers, plug the SSD into a Z68 6 gb/s header, and the three 3 gb/s devices into the three 3 gb/s headers.
2) Plug the SSD into a Marvell controlled header, and the three 3 gb/s devices into the three 3 gb/s headers.
3) Plug the SSD into a Z68 6 gb/s header, the DVD into a 3 gb/s header, and the two hard drives into the two Marvell controlled headers.
4) Plug the SSD into a Z68 6 gb/s header, the two hard disks into two of the 3 gb/s headers, and the DVD into a Marvell contolled header.
There are two considerations to which I don't know the answer. First, will using the Marvell controlled headers for one or two devices provide any advantage by reducing any marginal load on the Z68 chipset? Second, how does the Marvell controller compare to the chipset controller in terms of throughput and reliability? Also, any reason why the boot drive (SSD) should use the chipset controller rather than the "extra" controller?
Any suggestions here on which headers to use and why?
As an aside, just out of curiousity (since I don't plan on using a RAID),with this motherboard could you build a RAID array across the two controllers? For example a 4 disk RAID using the two Z68 6 gb/s headers and the two Marvell controlled headers?
