I'm trying to make a storage server to keep all my bulky files put away on, I have my new motherboard and the raid card. Its a PCI-E 4x card, (highpoint 3210) and a jetway nf4 socket 939 motherboard... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813153030 On the motherboard, you put one video card in the middle 16x slot for single VGA mode, or one in the bottom and one in the top 16x slot for SLI mode... not what I was expecting when it had 3 16x slots. But anyway, I have my video card in the bottom 16x slot, and the raid card in the top slot, so each should have 8x of bandwith. But its not recognizing the rad card on boot up... I dont see the RAID card bios but the manual says it should prompt you to press ctrl + H to go into the setup for it... I'm going to swap the cards around to see if it helps, If not, any suggestions for 939 motherboards with a 4x PCI-E slot, or a 16x that I can throw a raid card into. I would try a PCI video card so the PCI-E is only for the raid, but I dont have any on hand... This has turned into a mess, 4 non-functioning computers in my basement, 1 semi functioning, and my laptop which still works... EDIT: ok, swapping the cards didnt help... still doesnt recognize it... Should I return this card and swap it for a 1x PCI-E RAID card? I'd actually prefer a software fakeraid card over a hardware card since this will be a dedicated server. I have a HDD cage/backplane, x64 3800+ dual core, 2 gigs of DDR400 ram, and a GeForce 6800 that I have, so I'm pretty much set on a 939 + DDR motherboard with PCI-E. I could but a cheapie video card if you guys think I could get this card working? The board has a 1x PCI-E slot, so a 1x raid card *better* work in that, but I would perfer to have the 4x working too, so later if I expand to 2 raid5 arrays I can have both adapters on PCIE instead of PCI. Thoughs, suggestions? Cheap PCI video card? Replace RAID card with 1x PCIE version? Return motherboard and get a different one?
Glancing at the product specs, it appears when you put a vid card in one of the 2 yellow x16 slots, the board automatically presumes you're going to be putting a vid card in the other slot, also. Here's what I would try, and as this is going to be a file sharing machine, not a game box, it shouldn't be too painful. Try putting in a plain PCI video card, not a PCI-Express, and put the RAID card in the center PCIex16slot, and see if the board acknowledges the RAID card. If so, you could then proceed to load up the system, and go. If not, you might either end up looking for a board with a dedicated PCIe x4 slot, which means server / workstation class boards ($$$$), or, like you said, a PCIe x1 card. Looking on Newegg, I can't find (quickly) any boards with an x4 PCIe slot, either....
Well a PCI video card, and putting the raid card in the center pci-e slot did it. I see the video card bios, main bios, then the raid card bios, then the board boots. Picked up a 160 gig Seagage IDE drive to be my system drive Jeeze, with PCI at least you just stuff it in the socket and go, maybe shuffle them around a bit if there is an IRQ problem
