If you mean the RAID controller builtintothe motherboard, I'd AVOID IT. It's not true hardware RAID.
If you mean the RAID controller built into the motherboard, I'd AVOID IT. It's not true hardware RAID.
Motherboard RAID is regarded as the worst of RAIDs, as it is motherboard specific, there are several online instances of the motherboard just losing the RAID configuration and hosing volumes, and in the end, if you're trying to get RAID on the less expensive but capable side, use software RAID built into Linux.
True hardware RAID is cached and will cost you in the wallet, but it costs more for a reason. Motherboard RAID often is just software RAID in firmware, only it can make the volume specific to that machine. Drive die or hardware issue? You can't necessarily recover the data by moving it to another system, since the motherboard may have done something odd to the formatting of the disk volume.
If you're looking for hardware RAID with Linux, I've had good luck with 3Ware controllers, and if you don't want to spend the cash, use software RAID. Comes free with Linux.
http://serverfault.com/questions/115498/soft-fake-raid-in-linux
