I'm just starting to research unRaid as a replacement for my v1 WHS, and I was hoping to repurpose all of my existing equipment. However, it looks like my motherboard (GIGABYTE GA-MA78G-DS3HP) uses HPA by default. I'd like to reuse as much of my existing equipment as possible, but I'm having a hard time finding a suitable replacement MB that will use my socket AM2 processor. Here's the spec list on my current setup.

 

Case - Norco 4020

Motherboard - GIGABYTE GA-MA78G-DS3HP

Processor - AMD Athlon 64 X2

Hard Drives -  I have various drives including Western Digital Green Drives and some Samsung drives

RAM - ADATA 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM

PSU - CORSAIR CMPSU-850TX 850W (I believe this is a single rail supply)

Expansion Cards - SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA II

 

 

My server is about 4 years old now, but I've had absolutely no hardware issues, and I'd like to keep the cost of moving to unRaid as low as possible.  If someone could recommend a MB that would use as much of my existing equipment as possible, I would greatly appreciate it!

 

 

After looking for a new MB for a while, I decided to see what I could put together for relatively cheap if I wanted to replace my MB and CPU.

 

MB - ECS A885GM-A2

CPU - AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz

RAM - Crucial 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600)

 

I should be able to reuse my power supply, and I have a PCI expansion card that I could reuse as well, although it might be a good time to upgrade that to a PCIe replacement.

 

Does anyone see a cheaper way to migrate to unRaid?

 

Thanks!

It would be nice to reuse that SAT2 card, but to get full speed out of it you would need to find a motherboard with a PCI-X slot... which is easier said than done.

Hmmmm.. That's a good point. I'd forgotten about that card being a PCIX card. For some reason I was thinking it's a PCI card. Looks like I'll have to add that to the upgrade list.