kasm Posted November 21, 2008 Share Posted November 21, 2008 I am looking to start my first unraid server and I need a motherboard that will work that is fairly inexpensive. So far I am planning of getting a BIOSTAR TForce TG31-A7. It is $60 at newegg. I contacted their support to confirm it can usb boot and they confirmed that it can. You think this board will work? I am also open to suggestions. If anyone knows of an amd cpu/mb that is 100% going to work that is fairly inexpensive I would love to hear it. I haven't been keeping up to date with the AMD side of things and don't know what is compatible and what isn't. My only request is that the MB have at least 3 PCI slots as I need that many to some day reach 16 HDs using the inexpensive 4 port sata hd controller. Quote Link to comment
NAS Posted November 21, 2008 Share Posted November 21, 2008 Gut reaction to your post. Dont use AMD use Intel. The low power CPU are more than enough for you and are cheap. Stick with biogger brands like Asus. Dont choose a board someone else (and preferably several peole have reported working). Cheap board may be a false economy. Theres a reason they are cheap. Reliable is worth a few more bucks. Forget PCI unless your going for the official board. Bus speed is the speed limit in unRAID so the newer slot types are far superior and cards are getting much cheaper very quickly. We are long overdue for a new official MB. The current one is getting so rare its becoming very expensive wheas a few months ago i picked one up for almost nothing. Quote Link to comment
lionelhutz Posted November 21, 2008 Share Posted November 21, 2008 I really don't know about that board. It's not listed as compatible. Did you search here for it. One option - The AMD boards with 740G northbridge & SB700 southbridge are cheap and have worked fine for a number of users and give 6 SATA ports. A low end 45W AMD processor is cheap too ($25 Sempron or $50 4850e). With 1 PCIe x16 slot you can use port multipliers (1 port multiplied to 5) and either go 2 port PCIe card to get 10 SATA or 4 port PCIe card to get 20 SATA. This post http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2642.0 is an example of one of these boards. If not, then a board with many PCIe x1 slots is handy because you can get cheap 2 port SATA2 boards that fit in these slots. Peter Quote Link to comment
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