http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157371

 

Would this board work?

$159.99 CDN

 

Planning to pair it up with an i3

 

I like the fact

1. USB On Board

2. 10 Sata X 6 "I know unless ssd, it's pointless" but is there anything wrong with the sata controller?

3. Dual Lan "once again overkill" I haven't heard anything wrong with the intel

 

Lan -  1 x Giga PHY Intel® I217V, 1 x GigaLAN Intel® I211AT

 

Sata

 

- 6 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s connectors by Intel® Z87, support RAID (RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10, Intel® Rapid Storage Technology 12 and Intel® Smart Response Technology), NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug

- 4 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s connectors by ASMedia ASM1061, support NCQ, AHCI and Hot Plug (SATA3_A4 connector is shared with the eSATA port)

 

If I'm not mistaken ASM1061 is the one that is included in the syba add on card, which if i'm not mistaken works? plug and play?

 

thanks !

 

1. USB On Board

2. 10 Sata X 6 "I know unless ssd, it's pointless" but is there anything wrong with the sata controller?

3. Dual Lan "once again overkill" I haven't heard anything wrong with the intel

 

Trying out a Z87 board at the moment. It is not the same model or brand, but I guess the chipset-related stuff is still somewhat relevant:

 

1. Connected the unRAID flash drive via an adapter to an internal USB header. So far so good, very nice.

2. Running pre-clear for 4-8 cycles on three drives in parallel. No problems for the first 66 hours (and counting). Speed as expected.

3. No luck with the I217V LAN, using a separate Intel NIC for the time being.

 

I was considering that particular ASRock board for a brief moment, but then remembered I usually stay away from that brand. Bad experiences from years back (probably not relevant anymore of course).

I don't know if AsRock has modified the design with this newer board, but the previous "Extreme" board (with the Z77) was a VERY power-hungry board ... in tests at hardware.info it idled at 57.6 watts !!

 

The Extreme models do tend to have all the bells and whistles, leading to the higher power demand.

1. USB On Board

2. 10 Sata X 6 "I know unless ssd, it's pointless" but is there anything wrong with the sata controller?

3. Dual Lan "once again overkill" I haven't heard anything wrong with the intel

 

Trying out a Z87 board at the moment. It is not the same model or brand, but I guess the chipset-related stuff is still somewhat relevant:

 

1. Connected the unRAID flash drive via an adapter to an internal USB header. So far so good, very nice.

2. Running pre-clear for 4-8 cycles on three drives in parallel. No problems for the first 66 hours (and counting). Speed as expected.

3. No luck with the I217V LAN, using a separate Intel NIC for the time being.

 

I was considering that particular ASRock board for a brief moment, but then remembered I usually stay away from that brand. Bad experiences from years back (probably not relevant anymore of course).

 

 

I would send Tom a message and request he include the driver for that onboard Intel NIC.

NIC working in rc15a.

I just replaced my motherboard with an ASRock Z87 Extreme6 and it is running fine with 5.0.  Some things I like:

- Has a built in USB 2.0 port on the motherboard to plug in the flash drive.

- Built in video with processor graphics support.

- Two LAN ports both working in bonding mode on unRAID.

- 10 SATA ports for a moderately sized server.  I have 8 - 2TB drives in my array with parity and cache, and one 2.5 inch drive I use for daily backups of some critical data.

- One eSATA port on the back panel for plugging in an external drive.  This is nice for pre-clearing replacement drives.

- Wide variety of CPU support from Pentium G3220 to Xeon (LGA 1150 Haswell core).  I'm using a Dual Core Pentium G3220 and it has more than enough power for unRAID.

- DDR3 memory up to 32GB.

- Backup BIOS flash.  Very easy to update BIOS.

 

This board is not booting fully for me.  Can someone please share BIOS settings they used to get it up and running?

 

Thanks

NM