Motherboard recommendation for LGA 1366


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My main unraid server is having some issues and I'm looking to build a second rig, which will likely replace my current rig.

 

I already have a Intel i7 960 LGA 1366 cpu and corsair 1333 memory.  I have one ssd SATA 6.0Gb/s hard drive for cache and I'm looking to buy some Western Digital 4tb drives, WD40EFRX, which are also sata 3. 

 

I'd like onboard video.

 

I already have a duel Intel gig nic, so don't care about onboard nic.

 

I plan to install 12gb or 16gb of ram and I will run the new Unraid 6 64bit version.  I use my server for Plex, sabnzb, etc but I want to start playing more with VM's.

 

With all of that information, can somebody recommend a motherboard known to work well with unraid?

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I can't recommend a specific motherboard, but it you want to get into virtualization and potentially doing pass through (which requires VT-D) then I would normally suggest ASrock or SuperMicro, but looking quickly at a few sites, it only looks like SuperMicro offers LGA 1366 motherboards that I can see. I don't know if LGA 1366 is an old standard, or one of the one-offs that didn't last long, but if my quick searches are any indication you may have limited options.

 

Actually, I just looked this CPU up on ark.intel.com and the CPU doesn't support VT-D, only VT-X and it's a 5 year old I7, so it would explain why it's hard to find something.

 

In summary... If you are staying with an older CPU like that it likely doesn't matter much which motherboard you use - just find something that support your socket and you should be fine (you can play with VMs on any platform really - VT-X is beneficial, which you support).

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I don't know if LGA 1366 is an old standard, or one of the one-offs that didn't last long ...

 

Socket 1366 was for the high-end CPUs at the time -- it has much higher I/O bandwidth than the mainstream Socket 1156 CPU's that were at the lower-end of the lineup at that time.    Socket 1366 was superseded by Socket 2011 ... which is still the high-end, performance socket today -- supporting higher bandwidth triple channel memory, more PCIe lanes, etc.  These boards used the excellent X58 chipset.

 

Commensurate with that, the Core i7-960 was a very high end CPU at the time (in fact, it was the top-of-the-line other than the "Extreme Edition" versions) ... and still has relatively very good performance (although only half of a high-end Haswell i7).

 

In other words, the only real downside of using the 960 is the lack of vt-d support.

 

You can still find good 1366 boards, but they're not particularly cheap.  E-bay has a few; Amazon and TigerDirect also list some -- but many of these are without the I/O plate and virtually all are without any cables or manuals (none of these are a big deal ... just something you should be aware of).

 

Any X58 board should work fine with UnRAID.  The only possible incompatibility would be the specific onboard NIC ... and since you're not going to use that anyway, it shouldn't matter.   

You can find less expensive boards, but here's one that I've used in the past and was very happy with (but I didn't use it with UnRAID):  http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gigabyte-GA-EX58-UD3R-Motherboard-Intel-X58-Express-Socket-LGA-1366-DDR3-/171304918620?pt=Motherboards&hash=item27e2919e5c

 

 

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Thanks!  I'll take a look at the gigabyte mb for sure.

 

I would think that moving to this 960 cpu would give me much faster results than what I'm running today, so this would be a performance upgrade.

 

edit:  I like that mb, but it doesn't have sata 3, SATA 6.0Gb/s.  I'm not worried that it doesn't have onboard video, a cheap card can fix that, but I really want a mb that has sata 3, as most the drives I will install are sata 3.  Did any of the x58 boards support sata 3?

 

Looks like they made a version with 2 6.0gb/s ports, GA-X58A-UD3R.  I may have to bid on this one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gigabyte-Technology-GA-X58A-UD3R-LGA-1366-Socket-B-/151279241982?pt=Motherboards&hash=item2338f20afe

 

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I would think that moving to this 960 cpu would give me much faster results than what I'm running today, so this would be a performance upgrade.

 

The X58 motherboard and Socket 1366 will give you much better I/O bandwidth and memory performance than what you have now;  but the actual CPU "horsepower" isn't that much better.  Your Core 2 X9650 scores 4375 on PassMark;  a Core i7-960 scores 5947 ... only a 36% improvement.

 

If you're looking for a significant bump in performance, you may want to forego using this hardware, and spend the money instead on a newer Haswell setup, or possibly an Ivy Bridge 2011 processor.    This would give you next-generation PCIe speeds and significantly better CPU performance.    If you want REALLY high-end performance, wait a few months and get a Socket 2011-3 board with a corresponding Haswell 8-core CPU  8)    One of those with quad-channel memory will be an amazing system !!

 

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lol, I need to take baby steps due to cost.  :)  I edited my above post, about the same time you posted your last one. 

 

Looks like they made a version with 2 6.0gb/s ports, GA-X58A-UD3R.  If I can get one of these on the cheap side, I will only need a cheap video card and I'm ready to rock!

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The updated GA-X58A-UD3R is a good choice.    Good luck on the auction.

 

I looked at "completed listings" to see what these are going for ... recent ones have sold between $200 and $269 => with those that sold for $200 all being "Buy It Now" sales.    So if you don't win the auction, look for a new listing that's still got a "Buy It Now" option and you can likely get it for that.    [As I'm sure you know, the instant there's a bid, the "Buy It Now" option isn't available]

 

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what size / brand of PS are you running?

 

On my UnRAID servers I have a 450w Silverstone SFX unit, a 650w Corsair TX unit, and a 650w Corsair HX unit.   

 

 

I have a 550 Corsair right now

 

For 10 drives that PSU should be fine ... no real reason to switch UNLESS it doesn't have the right power outputs (notably an 8-pin CPU auxiliary power connection).   

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Good point, I will need to confirm it does have the right power connectors.  I ended up buy the GA-X58A-UD3R on ebay, found one that was Buy Now for $239. with free shipping, and it was Rev 2 of the this board.  On the way!

 

I have a slightly off topic question for you Gary.  Can I just swap my current mb for the GA-X58A-UD3R, connect up my drives and simple use my same USB flash drive with my current configurations - without having to reconfig anything?  I learned today that v5 uses drive serial numbers for config, so it shouldn't matter as long as it finds the drives it's looking for, right?

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Can I just swap my current mb for the GA-X58A-UD3R, connect up my drives and simple use my same USB flash drive with my current configurations - without having to reconfig anything?

 

Yes, that's all there is to it.  Since v5 tracks drive assignments by serial number, it's completely agnostic with regards to the details of the system, as long as the hardware is supported by the underlying Linux drivers.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I would recommend the DX58SO if you are serious about running VM. Most of the other x58 boards have so many problems due to buggy IOMMU. Previously I had a P6T board which did not work. I know many others also have problems.

 

EDIT: Also I would not recommend a ATI card for passthrough, I had a ton of trouble passing through a ATI card in Xen. I would just pay a bit extra to get a Quadro card. I picked up a Quadro 2000 off ebay for $75.

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too late, the Gigabyte mb already showed up, done deal.

 

As for the video card, that is interesting in how a AMD video card would have issues with VM's.  I don't plan on doing anything with VM's in the beginning, as I just want to get to unraid 6 64bit first.  So perhaps I will use the HD 7750 card for now and just switch it out later.

 

My other video card option is a evga GTX 580, which I thought was way overkill for unraid server.  Also uses a lot more power than the HD 7750.

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too late, the Gigabyte mb already showed up, done deal.

 

As for the video card, that is interesting in how a AMD video card would have issues with VM's.  I don't plan on doing anything with VM's in the beginning, as I just want to get to unraid 6 64bit first.  So perhaps I will use the HD 7750 card for now and just switch it out later.

 

My other video card option is a evga GTX 580, which I thought was way overkill for unraid server.  Also uses a lot more power than the HD 7750.

 

Ok, I hope it works out for you. You can't pass through a regular nvidia card so an AMD card should be the best/cheapest choice, in theory it should work fine. But in practice there are tons of problems, see http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=163317 of course if you don't pass it through and plan to just use the AMD card in Dom0 then this is the best choice.

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Sorry, as I know we are drifting off the motherboard topic.  I'm confused by your post.  You said you went with a Quadro 2000, which is a Nvidia chip I think.  But in your other post you pass-through doesn't work with Nvidia, so go with AMD / ATI chip?

 

Let's start over.  With my mb setup and with the idea to use VM's in the future, what is the recommended video card to go with so pass-through works and still good price?

 

I don't know what you mean by AMD card in Dom0??  What is Dom0?

 

Will this card work good with VM's and mb - Gigabyte VCX GV-R726XOC-2GD R7 260X OC 2GB ?

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Sorry, it is kinda confusing. Dom0 is the domain started by Xen on boot. If you are using Unraid as host then this is Unraid. If you are running Xen in Ubuntu then it is Ubuntu. If you want to use the R7 260 in Dom0 then it will work fine. See http://wiki.xen.org/wiki/Domain for explaination of Dom0 and DomU.

 

It is my experience that passing through a AMD 6450 or a R7 250 to Windows 7 did not work in Xen and probably would not work with any other DomU. It just errors out. Probably it is hardware specific, could be related to the x58 MB or the bios of the video cards that I used. Just doing a quick google search though turns up more people with this same problem on different hardware. So more likely it is a Xen problem with certain hardware. Its hard to say if the card you linked to would work or not for pass through. All I can say is that a Quadro cards are the best bet and are supported for Multi-OS. All other Nvidia cards are not.

 

Do you think you could return the R7-260 if it does not work? It may be cheaper than a Quadro and is probably also more powerful. Alternatively, if you have a old AMD card lying around like my 6450, you could test that before you buy the R7 260.

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Thanks.  I'm only going to use the R7 short term, to get server online.  Before any VM stuff, I'm looking at Quadro 2000D on ebay (Lenovo brand and HP brand cards have buy now option).  You got a good deal on yours at $75.  I assume used.  So with the gigabyte mb and quadro video card - do you think this will be a good setup for my new unraid and be ready for playing with VM's?

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Yes, mine is a PNY which I got used. Many are a lot more expensive, I shopped around a lot before finding that deal.

 

I think the gigabyte MB and a quadro should be a good place to start provided that there is no problems with IOMMU on that board. If you get the R7 first you could also test that in passthrough before you order a Quadro. No point in spending extra money if you don't need it. I would set it up and see if it works!

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Happy to report back that my rebuild went great.  I removed everything,  cleaned my case, replaced the case fans and then installed new PSU the gigabyte mb, etc.  A couple trips to the BIOS to get the settings dialed in and ran memtest for 3 full passes.  Keep in mind I had this memory and this cpu in my main pc for the last 18+ months and it worked perfect.  Didn't see any reason running memtest for ever on mostly known hw.  Booted right into unraid and I was amazed of how fast the server boots now.  I used to watch the dots ........ go by while the main image was loading (this is before you see the lines scroll up as it loads drivers and boots).  The initial load time was around 2 or 3 minutes.  It was less than 20 seconds with the new hw.  Ran a parity check - all good.  Syslog shows nothing to worry about, so I think I can confirm that the GA-X58A-UD3R rev 2 is a good mb for unraid server.  :)

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Good to hear all went well.    As I noted earlier, I was very happy with the GA-X58A-UD3R board in the systems I used it for.  They weren't UnRAID setups, but I had little doubt it would do well for this purpose as well.

 

Certainly a very nice improvement in startup times !!

 

 

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Happy to report back that my rebuild went great.  I removed everything,  cleaned my case, replaced the case fans and then installed new PSU the gigabyte mb, etc.  A couple trips to the BIOS to get the settings dialed in and ran memtest for 3 full passes.  Keep in mind I had this memory and this cpu in my main pc for the last 18+ months and it worked perfect.  Didn't see any reason running memtest for ever on mostly known hw.  Booted right into unraid and I was amazed of how fast the server boots now.  I used to watch the dots ........ go by while the main image was loading (this is before you see the lines scroll up as it loads drivers and boots).  The initial load time was around 2 or 3 minutes.  It was less than 20 seconds with the new hw.  Ran a parity check - all good.  Syslog shows nothing to worry about, so I think I can confirm that the GA-X58A-UD3R rev 2 is a good mb for unraid server.  :)

 

Great, let us know also if passthrough works for you!

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