# SATA III Cable Question



## travva (Jan 26, 2011)

For a sata 3 drive, will a regular sata cable work?


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## Kreij (Jan 26, 2011)

Yes.


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## Mussels (Jan 26, 2011)

sata cables dont change specs between the revisions.


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## Kreij (Jan 26, 2011)

As with all cables, there may be issues with transmission of data over longer lengths as the frequency (throughput speed) increases. This is not going to happen in under a meter (like inside your case).

There is no need to purchase overpriced cables because they are gold tipped, blessed by the Pope and waved over an active volcano for good luck.


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## erocker (Jan 26, 2011)

My Crosshair IV came with Sata III cables. They say 6gbps on them. Sata II cables are good up to 3gbps. Either way, no hard drive is going to come close to 3gbps.


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## Mussels (Jan 26, 2011)

erocker said:


> My Crosshair IV came with Sata III cables. They say 6gbps on them. Sata II cables are good up to 3gbps. Either way, no hard drive is going to come close to 3gbps.



there is no official spec for sata I/II/III cables, its just marketing crap.


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## Kreij (Jan 26, 2011)

It's all marketing. Copper serial cable at short distance are easily capable of high speed data transfer as long as they not total crap.
It usually means they were only tested to perform to a certain spec, not what they are capable of handling.


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## johnspack (Jan 26, 2011)

Doesn't seem like there is any difference:  http://www.allpinouts.org/index.php/Serial_ATA_(SATA,_Serial_Advanced_Technology_Attachment


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## erocker (Jan 26, 2011)

SATA Revision 2.0 (SATA 3Gb/s)
First-generation SATA devices often operated at best a little faster than parallel ATA/133 devices. Subsequently, a 3 Gbit/s signaling rate was added to the physical layer (PHY layer), effectively doubling maximum data throughput from 150 MB/s to 300 MB/s. 

For mechanical hard drives, SATA 3 Gbit/s transfer rate is expected to satisfy drive throughput requirements for some time, as the fastest mechanical drives barely saturate a SATA 1.5 Gbit/s link. A SATA data cable rated for 1.5 Gbit/s will handle current mechanical drives without any loss of sustained and burst data transfer performance. However, high-performance flash drives are approaching SATA 3 Gbit/s transfer rate. 

Given the importance of backward compatibility between SATA 1.5 Gbit/s controllers and SATA 3 Gbit/s devices, SATA 3 Gbit/s autonegotiation sequence is designed to fall back to SATA 1.5 Gbit/s speed when in communication with such devices. In practice, some older SATA controllers do not properly implement SATA speed negotiation. Affected systems require the user to set the SATA 3 Gbit/s peripherals to 1.5 Gbit/s mode, generally through the use of a jumper, however some drives lack this jumper. Chipsets known to have this fault include the VIA VT8237 and VT8237R southbridges, and the VIA VT6420, VT6421A and VT6421L standalone SATA controllers. SiS's 760 and 964 chipsets also initially exhibited this problem, though it can be rectified with an updated SATA controller ROM. 

SATA Revision 3.0 (SATA 6Gb/s)
Serial ATA International Organization presented the draft specification of SATA 6 Gbit/s physical layer in July 2008, and ratified its physical layer specification on August 18, 2008. The full 3.0 standard was released on May 27, 2009. While even the fastest conventional hard disk drives can barely saturate the original SATA 1.5 Gbit/s bandwidth, Solid State Disk drives have already saturated the SATA 3 Gbit/s limit at 250 MB/s net read speed. Ten channels of fast flash can reach well over 500 MB/s with new ONFI drives, so a move from SATA 3 Gbit/s to SATA 6 Gbit/s would benefit the flash read speeds. As for the standard hard disks, the reads from their built-in DRAM cache will end up faster across the new interface. Seagate was the first company to offer SATA 6 Gbit/s hard drives. 

The new specification contains the following changes: 

A new Native Command Queuing (NCQ) streaming command to enable Isochronous data transfers for bandwidth-hungry audio and video applications. 
An NCQ Management feature that helps optimize performance by enabling host processing and management of outstanding NCQ commands. 
Improved power management capabilities. 
A small Low Insertion Force (LIF) connector for more compact 1.8-inch storage devices. 
A connector designed to accommodate 7 mm optical disk drives for thinner and lighter notebooks. 
Alignment with the INCITS ATA8-ACS standard. 
The enhancements are generally aimed at improving quality of service for video streaming and high priority interrupts. In addition, the standard continues to support distances up to a meter. The new speeds may require higher power consumption for supporting chips, factors that new process technologies and power management techniques are expected to mitigate. The new specification can use existing SATA cables and connectors, although some OEMs are expected to upgrade host connectors for the higher speeds. Also, the new standard is backwards compatible with SATA 3 Gbit/s. 

There's the difference.


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## Mussels (Jan 26, 2011)

yeah, those differences are on the controller/drive side of things - the specs for the *cables* never changed.


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## erocker (Jan 26, 2011)

Mussels said:


> yeah, those differences are on the controller/drive side of things - the specs for the *cables* never changed.



I don't believe anyone is saying they have.


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## Kreij (Jan 26, 2011)

Mod saturation in a thread FTW !! 

If you are really worried about it, go buy some Monster Cables for $$$.$$.
They will be gold contacts and tested for high bandwidth.
They will cost you about 10x the price, but you will have peace of mind. 

... or just use regular SATA cables and instead buy more hardware for your rig.
Your call really.


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## Mussels (Jan 26, 2011)

erocker said:


> I don't believe anyone is saying they have.



thats the point we've been trying to make, since it sounded like you WERE saying they have.





> My Crosshair IV came with Sata III cables. They say 6gbps on them. Sata II cables are good up to 3gbps. Either way, no hard drive is going to come close to 3gbps.



That can be interpreted as:

My board came with sata III cables, so they do exist for a reason. Since no drive will use even 3Gbps it doesnt matter if you use a SATA II cable/drop to sata II speeds.

the way you meant it was:
I've seen/used sata III cables, but it doesnt make a difference.


The problem is your post just didn't read out the way you intended it to. We thought you were saying the cables did make a difference.

then you replied to johnspack saying there was no difference (when he was referring to the cables specs), and posted a wall of text saying 'theres the difference' instead of saying 'look, no difference with cables!'


[/nitpicking]


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## erocker (Jan 26, 2011)

Mussels said:


> thats the point we've been trying to make, since it sounded like you WERE saying they have.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Okay. 


[/mild trolling]


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## travva (Jan 26, 2011)

Thanks fellas. I figured as much but i was/am on my Droid and didn't feel like googling.


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## Kreij (Jan 26, 2011)

No problem, Travva, it's a good question that others may find useful and it gave us mods a chance to try to ninja edit each other.


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## dr emulator (madmax) (Jan 26, 2011)

well guys i wanted smaller cables for my cm 690II (15cm to be precise) and the only ones i could find where here and they only came in sata 3 so 
ye i have to have them or none at all (to long = mess )



Kreij said:


> As with all cables, there may be issues with transmission of data over longer lengths as the frequency (throughput speed) increases. This is not going to happen in under a meter (like inside your case).
> 
> There is no need to purchase overpriced cables because they are gold tipped, blessed by the Pope and waved over an active volcano for good luck.


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## Bo$$ (Jan 26, 2011)

Major LOL


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