I bought four "untested" 2nd hand motherboards from ebay.

 

Normally wouldnt do this but they were cheap and four potentially good unraid boards, xfx 8300, asus m2n32 sli deluxe, abit a-s78h and a gigabyte GA-MA79OX-UD4.

 

Two with onboard video, all Gb pci-e, 6 or more sata ports, at least two pci-e slots, one with 4. Boards arrived in a box well wrapped. Good start. One of the boards had the remains of anrma sticker, not so good.

 

They all looked in good condition, at least. The gigabyte had a few scratches on the heat pipes and the asushad some dented fins on its heatpipe, abit was a bit dusty and had a broken speaker / buzzer.

 

First onto the test bench was the xfx, onboard video, 7 sata (6 on sb) and a sil3132 (1 internal, 1 esata). Nvidia Gb, leaves pci-e x16 and x1 slot free and two pci slots. The board oozes quality. Even more so when plugged in, leds for bios, ram and psu onboard. Led panel on the rear shows boot codes during startup. Ram leds on, board boots. checked sata ports, all working, setup the bios for unRaid. Plugged in usb and unraid booted straight in. Wow it boots fast. About 1 minute as a guess to load unraid. Found the network card. Sata supported ahci, raid or ide. Reports as udma 133. Dual bios.

 

 

Next up Abit a-s78h, 780g chipset, Gb on pci-e, 6 sata, pci-e 2.0 (ddr), 1x16 and 1x1, 2 pci, ati radeon 3200 vga, crossfire board. No ps2 mouse, 4 usb, 4 more onboard - 12 total. Onboard Led for psu. Board boots, bios setup for unraid, boots in 3mins. Nic found, sata udma 133 reported. Not as nice as xfx board, pci-e x1 isvery close to vga heatsink. Bios is not intuitive but lots of options including ehci. Layout shows little thought for installer/builder.

 

 

So two working boards, out of two.

 

Next up the gigabyte, this time a 790x, am2+, ht3, 5 pci-e slots, 2 pci, 6 sata, Gb, another crossfire board, looks the business, however several people reported this board dying in early life, ironic given the ultra durable tags all overthe board. Again poorly laid out. 12v and cpu fan sockets are against the psu. Obscured by a decent size hs. One sideof the hs is alsoagainstthe fan. Awkward. Hook it all up. Power on nothing. cmos flattened. Nothing. Ram pulled nothing. Exactly as reports suggest dead as a dodo. Notso durable after all...

 

Last one up is the asus m2n32-sli deluxe. Again sli board, this is the bib bruv to my current workstations board. Quality item. Dual bios, dual Gb, pci-e x16 x2, x4 and a x1. 2 x pci, 7 sata, 1esata, wireless. Setup bios for unraid, booted in around 3 mins. Udma 100 reported, Nic found and working. Layout is good, like the xfx, loads of fan sockets. nvidia 590 sli chipset. 6 onboard sata plus sill3132. marvell dual nic.

 

So three possible unraid boards. Will do some level one testing tomorrow, and some performance testing. All in all looks like money well spent. If anyone in the uk wants a motherboard drop me a pm I have several spares! I must find a pci vga card...

 

Rgds

 

Kevin.

 

test bench: antec earthwatts 500, amd sempron 3500+, amd 5000+ black edition, kingston 800 ddr2 2 x 1 Gb memory, Crucial ddr2 800 2 x 1 Gb memory, xfx 8600gt pci-e vga, kingston data traveller ii usb, seagate baracuda 500gb, samsung hd103uj both sata. Arctic 64 hs and fan.

 

All of the boards were flashed to the latest bios, booted to xp to identify any problem h/w. memtest 1 hour. All passed ok, except gigabyte which never booted.

When you get your testing done, let me know and I will get them into the Hardware Compatibility Page.  If you could also make separate posts for each board when you finish the level one testing that would also be a big help; that way I can point the wiki entries on the Hardware Compatibility Page to those specific threads.

No problem, will do as requested.