Need motherboard for home fileserver

[Mark Powell]

On Wed, 3 Oct 2007, Dmitry Marakasov wrote:

> * Dmitry Marakasov (amdmi3 at amdmi3.ru) wrote:
>
> Thanks for you replies so far. Now after some digging I understand a bit
> what I actually need.

Probably best combination for cheap low power ZFS server at moment:

Gigabyte GA-G33-DSR4

On board VGA Intel GMA 3100
Integrated ALC889A 8-Channel High Definition audio
All 8 on-board SATA supported by FreeBSD 7
   6xSATA on ICH9
   2xSATA on Gigabyte SATA Controller which is really the well supported JMB363
But On-board Realtek GbE, which is a piece of crap, so buy an Intel 1000PT PCI-E gig adapter

Couple that with the cheapest, effective, Core2Duo:

Intel CPU Pentium DualCore E2140

They are similar price to the cheapest AMD and are really just a Core2Duo 
with just 1MB cache and offical 800MHz FSB. However, they are the same 
silicon as C2D. As such these run easily at ~3GHz with 350-400MHz FSB all 
with no voltage increases, if you're into such things.
   It's a shame AMD have fallen behind Intel. Corporate crime does pay it 
seems :(

> Well, I hoped to get a SocketAM2 board for AthlonX2, as it is 30-40%
> cheaper than Core2Duo with similar performance, but most of AM2
> motherboards use nForce chipset, which is unsupported by CURRENT.
> The  only solution I've found is M2N32-SLI (thanks Craig), but I'll
> need to buy video card and Intel Gbit NIC.
>
> Though Core 2 Duo CPUs are more expensive,

See above. Possibly not as low power as an AMD solution, but a lot more 
for your money, me thinks.

> choice of motherboards is much wider, and they are generally cheaper 
> than M2N32-SLI, so price of AMD/Intel platforms is nearly equal. I've 
> found some MB's with integrated video and Intel ethernet: ASUS P5B-VM 
> DO, Intel DG33BUC, Intel DG33FBC. I think I'll buy one of those, but 
> just to be sure, are those statements right: - Marvell/NVidia NICs suck, 
> and I am right that I definitely need Intel.
>  (what about RealTec, btw?)

Only Intel NICs. All those others you mention just don't work properly. 
Intel will save you headaches.

> - ICH8DO should work as well as ICH8 and G33 should work as well as G965
>  (didn't find menton of ICH8DO in src/sys/dev/ata/ata-chipset.c)
> - ADI*/Realtec(ALC*)/Sigmatel(STAC*) HDA CODECs provide more or less
>  equal sound quality. And it can be considered `good' to
>  non-audiophiles.

Cheers.

-- 
Mark Powell - UNIX System Administrator - The University of Salford
Information Services Division, Clifford Whitworth Building,
Salford University, Manchester, M5 4WT, UK.
Tel: +44 161 295 4837  Fax: +44 161 295 5888  www.pgp.com for PGP key