expensive SATA cables are unnecessary

[hyperdimension]

I was looking for some new SATA cables as the ones I have had no metal clips, so were a bit loose and were causing disk detection and read errors sometimes.

Most of the ones I could see on shelves were expensive, for 190 THB. e.g.:

They looked good, and came in nice packaging, but the question is do they really work better than cheap SATA cables (with metal clips) that fit perfectly into the slots at each end? And does a SATA cable branded as "SATA III" perform faster than a "SATA II" or "SATA III" cable?

I did some research and found that all SATA cables perform the same.

e.g.:

Bogus Branding - "SATA III" Cables vs. "SATA II" Cables

SATA 3Gb/s vs. 6Gb/s Cable Performance (Revisited)

So I went out and bought these cheap ones from JIB in the new Palladium IT centre for 30 THB each:

And they work fine. I would have wasted 640 THB for no extra real value if I did not know that they are actually all the same apart from packaging and appearance.

I had to ask for these cheap ones as they are not on the shelves. They were under the counter. I showed the shop assistant this web page with picture and price: GMS CABLE HDD SERIAL SATA 7-PIN METAL HEAD CB004D

I had also previously looked around at other IT accessory shops and there were some cheap ones costing 30 THB, 60 THB, and 100 THB each, and they looked pretty much the same as the 30 THB one from JIB but some were different colours.

So the one from JIB was cheapest and they are more trustworthy than other shops, so I got those.

Maybe this experience will be useful to anyone else who in future needs SATA cables but doesn't like to waste money.

Edited May 27, 2016 by hyperdimension