RIP :.-/ So Whats the Next Step, Motherboard Death and Moving on , Where do we go from here ?

SO Heres my Conundrum... First of all this is My First ever post gulp. Second I would like to seek help, knowledge, and wisdom from the community.

Heres the story so far ..... Many years ago I purchased a GIGABYTE , 1156 Motherboard , a CPU , the Graphics Card , like we all do at sometime or other , . I Ventured into new territory and spending a couple of thousand dollars having the First ever i7 Series and 32GB of 1600 Memory Purchasing ( http://ark.intel.com/products/41315/Intel-Core-i7-870-Processor-8M-Cache-2_93-GHz ) ( "Which Now you can pick up for about $50 ha! I spent $300" )

This Antiquated Beauty lasted me up till yesterday afternoon, May she rest in pieces .; but dear god did she see and do some amazing things . She saw the Birth of Crypto Currency, she Mined at peak power, dodging 2 Explosions from a fiery overworked ATI/AMD graphics card, Thankfully without fault to the main board, but did she smoke,( I guess "Smoking Kills" .. motherboards in the end ); so that occurred Christmas 2013 and Summer of 2015 . Thankfully with some persuasion GIGABYTE replaced the Card Twice.

She was a Multicultured Hackintosh Linux and dare I Say a Windows Box also , she did it all , She Mined Bitcoin , Litecoin , ETH , and Many others including a few tests of homebrew coins. But alas its all come to an end.... sigh She lost all her power and shall never turn on again. , and will be greatly missed ... She will be buried with her kin in the basement for prosperity.

So STEEMIT GUYS, Heres my next Problem. The Case is EMPTY ! , here bare bones lay in pieces on the Floor, Cable, and Fans and the 16 Hard Drives sit motionlessly, silent and cold. the 1200 Watt Power supply sits idly by. ( Yup she sure had the power )

Before I continue I have a Budget of $500 CASH and put aside 0.5 BTC, for anything concerning with a new (i shall not say replacement, I will say next generation build ) .

[] Other Things to Remember ...

I have 1 PCI ( yes PCI ) SATA CARDS with 4 x SATA
and 1 x PCI Express x4 SATA III RAID Card ( Supplying a HARDWARE RAID 5 X 2 )

Question 1 : What is that Best way to cost effectively add at least 8 RAID Drives into a new system . , and what is the best recommended RAID CARD that is cost effective, considering do I go for a 1X8 or a 2x4 , it does not have to be SERVER spec such as a LSI . ( I do have one of those already for another system they run super hot ! )

( This is not the Main Operation drive this is a backup redundancy drive set )

(Keeping the PCI-E x4 and purchase another ? ) or should i locate a motherboard that at least contains 1 PCI as backup ? Remembering overall speed isnt important its redundancy and backup purposes, what would you do ?
Comment 1: Remembering that the previous system was an all for 1 and 1 for all multi OS , the Motherboard, CPU , and everything else must be able to be compatible with such operation. Such as OSX , LINUX and WIN all available on one system.

I also have 2 unopened M.2 PCI X4 Cards they are Dual M.2 with one being fed from the PCI bus and the other from the SATA port. so the choice of compatibility and PCI-E Card space.

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I also Have 2x 1TB Samsung Solid State (SSD) normally set as RAID 1 from the On-Board SATA II RAID, there was no SATA III RAID on board.

Comment 2: My knowledge of M.2 and U.2 and SATA Express is not to par , I have never used them and don't know what to compare, I constantly work on video and audio projects and latency is key.

Question 2 : What is the best possible combination to Reuse the 1TB SSD's and Utilize the M.2 / U.2 Sockets either from the start or in the near distant future?

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I have a Full extra large Tower case so space is not a problem, so im not looking to micro down in fact I'm looking at getting a motherboard that has the most PCI-E + PCI* slots as possible, im not into these ultra small, mini or micro boards. I want to Expand, attach and push the limits :) thus EATX or greater would be the better options.

Comment 3 : I've been a dedicated user of GIGABYTE for many years just because customer service repairs have been excellent in my personal experience, so I have never touched ASUS or MSI , or any of the others, so you may have to explain and encourage me why should I move? What are the benefits, the pro[s] & the cons, the good and the bad.

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So on to the main event....

I have to purchase a Motherboard , CPU , FAN , and Memory, as I said above I Have 500 US Dollars, and 0.5BTC Which I may have to turn into FIAT unless you can let me know of any ways other than PURSE.IO to convert ( I was a beta tester for PURSE and sad to say its changed in such a way that I rarely use it, but I will if I have to this time :)

Question 3 : What Motherboard , CPU , FAN , and Memory should I decided to Narrow my Seach down to , considering the requirements and uses, costs and scalability. the system i build should last at least 5 to 7 Years ( with a few minor add-ons throughout its news life )
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Question 4 : Once you might have convinced me to Look at this list of items ( i will be shortlisting to 3 motherboards and a list of extras ) , where would you consider purchasing and why?. I would prefer to eat into the cash First and just take a small fraction of Bitcoin.

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Final Comment:

Thank you for spending the time to read this and if you reply, thankyou for doing so. I hope you can partake in bringing a new system to life , that will be around for many a year to come. Imagine what the previous system saw and created , imagine what the future will bring :) , Follow me on the journey , lets see where this ends up

Look Forward to discovering, discussing and building ...
Untill Next Time

Keep on STEEMing . . . . . . .