SATA III controller card: worth it?

[Thanatos]

As some of you may know, my hard drive is failing and I'm in the market for a new HDD and an SSD to accompany it. My issue is that my mobo only supports SATA II, so to work around that I'd probably buy a SATA III controller card to get the most out of the SSD. My question is: Will using a card like this work just like if I had a mobo with SATA III support? I'm afraid that problems may arise if I use a card like this, and I wanted to make sure that I could. Oh, and here's my mobo: M4A88T-V EVO/USB3

And yes, the SSD I'd get would be SATA III. I'm still not very sure if I'll be doing the SSD/HDD combo thing quite yet, so I'm just theorizing at the moment. Any help/experience is appreciated.

 

[S.T.A.R.S.]

This decision is really up to you lol.
Yes with SSD and that SATA 3 card you will get better speeds than you will with HDD.Just consider if you will have any big storage needs because if you will,you will either need to get big SSD (what is more expensive) or a big decent HDD.
You must think wether or not you really need so big speeds and wether or not you want to waste money on it.

As for your motherboard,it needs to have PCI-E x2 slot and not PCI-E x1 slot because if you use that SATA 3 card on PCI-E x1 slot,you will still have SATA 2 speeds instead of SATA 3.
So be sure to investigate that on your motherboard before buying the card.

Also the SSD drive needs to be properly configured in order to get the maximum speeds.You might need to enable that in your BIOS and for some SSD drives you might also need to configure that in OS too.
Some people needed to even do some registry editing,but these are extreme cases and I am sure you won't have to do any registry editing.




Cheers!

 

[Okedokey]

Most of what stars has said is irrelevant.

Your motherboard supports pcie slots and will work with that card. You can put the card in any of the pcie slots on your motherboard and get full speeds. It will make a huge difference over a standard HDD.

 

[voyagerfan99]

I got a free $60 SSD card when I bought mine last year. I wasn't expecting to use it, but after I saw slower speeds than I would have liked on my SSD, I used the SATA III card that came with my SSD and it was about 150MB/s faster.

 

[Thanatos]

Thanks, everyone. I think that if I can get enough funds then I will be doing a 2TB HDD and a 120 GB SSD combo, and use the SSD for a quick boot-up and quicker loading screens in games, and I might even put some programs that I use often on it, like iTunes. I'm really going into this thing blind, and I just hope everything works out in the end.

Here's a question: If I did want iTunes to start very quickly, then would I need to put all of my music on the SSD as well? It's 23 GB, so I hope I wouldn't have to do that.

 

[tremmor]

I wouldn't put the music on the SSD drive. Music pictures etc goes on the other. Programs ya use often like the operating system etc the SSD.

 

[S.T.A.R.S.]

Thanks, everyone. I think that if I can get enough funds then I will be doing a 2TB HDD and a 120 GB SSD combo, and use the SSD for a quick boot-up and quicker loading screens in games, and I might even put some programs that I use often on it, like iTunes. I'm really going into this thing blind, and I just hope everything works out in the end.

Here's a question: If I did want iTunes to start very quickly, then would I need to put all of my music on the SSD as well? It's 23 GB, so I hope I wouldn't have to do that.

Where you will put your music is really up to you.
You can always buy bigger SSD such as 512 GB if you REALLY want to everything load as fast as possible.




Holy crap I just made 2000 posts!!!
I am going to celebrate!
Adios!!!

 

[voyagerfan99]

Holy crap I just made 2000 posts!!!
I am going to celebrate!
Adios!!!

Even though post count doesn't matter, don't you mean "cheers"?

 

[S.T.A.R.S.]

Even though post count doesn't matter, don't you mean "cheers"?

Ah damn you are right .I guess I was in shock and I used the wrong word lol.
These glasses remind me when I used them once (not this exact picture of course) in one of my posts (last year I think lol).
I can't remember what I was celebrating back then hahaha

Anyway...

CHEERS!!!

You can notice 5 glasses.Each one per user who posted in this thread:
-The greatest S.T.A.R.S.
-Tremmor
-Thanatos
-Okeydokey
-Voyagerfan99 (YOU!!! )



By looking at the hands,there are only 2 MEN and other 3 are FEMALE.
Voyagerfan99...my man...we are in PARADISE since we are surrounded with WOMEN!!!

 

[Thanatos]

Pass out some cigars.