Question about cable placement on GA-P67A-UD3

[BahamutLagoon]

With the way the layout is of the UD3, the video card I have is right above the two SATA3 ports. I have all my devices (two hard drives, disc drive) currently plugged into SATA2 ports because the cables would be right on front of the fan of the video card if I were to have them plugged into the SATA3 ports. But with the recent talk of SATA2 ports going bad with Sandy Bridge builds I've been thinking about switching the hard drive's to the two SATA3 ports and the disc drive to a PCI SATA card.

Now to my question, will having two SATA cables directly in front of the video card fan have any negative consequences? I'd like to hear what others with this board have done with large video cards and what they plan on doing if/when the SATA2 ports go bad.

[faizoff]

I have a Radeon HD 4670 and it fits quite comfortably with ample space from the SATA III ports. What Video card do you have? I've read elsewhere about large Video cards obstructing the SATA III ports.

I'm not really sure if it will make any difference if the Video card is right in front of the ports.

[zaphod6502]

Now to my question, will having two SATA cables directly in front of the video card fan have any negative consequences?

I have the same setup. I am using a GTX285 which is a double width full length card and quite large. I use the two SATA 6GB ports and the video card basically rests on them. I have bent the flexible flat cables slightly away from the third fan on the video card cooler to not obstruct the airflow. It's not an ideal solution but there have been no ill effects. The SATA cables are stiff enough so that they do not enter the fan port and obstruct the operation of the fans. You could also consider using SATA cables with an L shaped connector which might make it easier to manage.

[Dark Mantis]

As has already been suggested just use a right angled cable to keep the wires out of the way and it shouldn't be any problem whatsoever.