Help with custom build

[sredmyer]

Originally Posted by The Wise Monkey

It depends on how urgently you need these PCs. USB 3.0 has started being released, and this offers up to a potential 4.8 Gbps transfer speeds.

I have seen reports on this new USB spec. I think though that I would probably want something more immediate.

Originally Posted by The Wise Monkey

Alternatively, there are adapters you can get such as this (but perhaps a bit cheaper than this):
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812232004

I realize that, of the options I listed, SATA is the fastest (and, based on this adaptor you suggest, also the cheapest) but my question was not so much about which I should choose but rather I was curious as to the limitations of the various technologies as it relates to their transfer rates. For instance I know that USB is rated at 480 Mbps but in reality one would likely see less than half of that. As for SATA, I know that when a port multiplier is used, all connected devices share the same 3GBps bandwidth. On the board you suggested with 6 SATA ports do those all have 3GBps bandwidth each or do they also share the bandwidth?

Also I was looking for some information that would help me understand the relationship between the drive read speed and the interface's data rate.

Lastly I was wondering whether or not there were other factors involved which would limit data throughput and therefore make the drive speed or the interface transfer rate a moot point.

Originally Posted by The Wise Monkey

IDE is pretty much deprecated as a technology now, but you could look for an older motherboard which should have several IDE ports. I would recommend going for the adapter though.

Yes I realize that IDE has seen it's day but that is the interface of the drives I will be using so any connection I use will need to be IDE at least on the drive side. I have decided to stick with these drives for two reasons. The first is I already own dozens of them so cost is nothing. Second, they have excellent DAE capabilities and are extremely good at ripping from even the worst discs (there are other models that may do better for some types of issues, but on average, in my experience these legacy Plextors are as good as it gets).

Thanks,
Steve

[The Wise Monkey]

Well, the base read speed of a CD is always 150KiB/s, so 48x is about 7200KiB/s, or about 59Mbps, so you aren't going to saturate any of the bandwidth for any of the mentioned technologies.

With multiple SATA ports, they are usually all connected to the same controller, and so share the bandwidth. Still, that leaves more than enough bandwidth to cope with any CD drives.

If you are still worried, you can also get PCI IDE adapters to spread the load a bit. PCI offers a bandwidth up to about 1Gbps, but again this is shared between slots. This adapter offers a couple of IDE slots:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816132004