If your K8V-MX uses the VT8237R Plus southbridge, it will accept modern SATA SSDs without any problems.

One thing to note, if you plan on running Win98 on that system, you may need to set the SATA controller to RAID mode in the BIOS.

The only way I can get 870 evo's (250 gb, 1tb doesn't even work at all) to work is using a usb adapter. Plugging them directly into the mboard causes hangs at post screen. Not sure what the mboard uses.

djsabreblade wrote on 2023-11-27, 20:23:

The only way I can get 870 evo's (250 gb, 1tb doesn't even work at all) to work is using a usb adapter. Plugging them directly into the mboard causes hangs at post screen.

I'm using a 120 GB Kingston and a 240 GB Sandisk SSD on my K8V-MX, both plugged directly into the SATA ports. They work fine under WinME and WinXP respectively.

Not sure what the mboard uses.

The revision of the southbridge is written in the chip itself. Here's how mine looks:

Notice the "Plus" inscription. That's the important bit, since that revision fixed the SATA III bug.

The k8v-mx /s doesn't use plus. So I guess I can't use ssd 's via sata.

You should be good if you pick up a pci Sata card and use the SSDs that way.

will have to try thanks

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-11-27, 20:30:

Notice the "Plus" inscription. That's the important bit, since that revision fixed the SATA III bug.

Thanks for the info; didn't know that difference until now. Went to check my K8V-MX and it had the VT8237R Plus southbridge. Hooray! 😄

what kind of speed am i getting via the usb adapter? it feels like about 50% faster loading times than regular drives but definitely not as fast as when i use them in newer computers.

Samsung SSDs have notoriously poor compatibility with old AMD SATA controllers on AMD AM2/AM3 platform, so it won't be surprising to see that crusty VIA SATA is also not compatible.

Anyway, you can use old Sandforce SSDs on VIA south bridge which have SATA bug. Sandforce has third-party utility which allows to force SATAI mode on most brands that were using SandForce SF-2281, including Intel.

what kind of speed am i getting via the usb adapter?

~30Mb/s tops, so UDMA33 level.

would it then be truly faster than the sata hdd's i use or not? (samsung 160gb and seagate 320gb) because sata is 150 MB/sec? it seems like loading is faster on various programs on the ssd even via usb or could it be placebo? i need to run some sort of read and write test for xp.

Worst-case scenario you can just use IDE with Startech IDE-SATA Adapter & pretty much run any SATA SSD.

Best 160-320Gb HDDs topped out around 60-70Mb/s at the edge of the platter. Access time and random read/writes are substantially better on SSD though. Windows XP doesn't care much about high sequential speed.

SWZSSR wrote on 2023-11-28, 05:51:

Worst-case scenario you can just use IDE with Startech IDE-SATA Adapter & pretty much run any SATA SSD.

Thats a good idea, although both ide ports are being fully utilized meaning 2 vintage cd-rom and cd-writer and the other one for my old quantum fireball 6gb (which i actually have unplugged at the moment to minimize wear and tear but the drive is fully backed up anyway)