Yoshi325 Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 Can someone give me some motherboard recommendations? I am looking for a board that supports an Intel Core 2 or greater processor. Pros would be onboard graphics, gig ethernet port, and 4 or more SATA ports. Another pro would be available through NewEgg. I ran through the wiki's hardware compatibility list, and read through the first 5 pages on this forum, but I'm coming up with some amazing AMD boards, and coming up short on Intel. Help Please. Quote Link to comment
ClunkClunk Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 I'm running unRAID on a Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P with no issues. It has gigabit ethernet, 4 RAM slots, 8 SATA ports and can use a C2D, or C2Q. The only thing it doesn't have is onboard graphics. Quote Link to comment
prostuff1 Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 Wiki man to the rescue . Check out the Hardware Compatibility Page for a list of all the boards that are known to work with unRAID. Quote Link to comment
Yoshi325 Posted December 10, 2009 Author Share Posted December 10, 2009 Thanks for the suggestion ClunkClunk. It looks promising, if no one suggestion a board with onboard video I might just go with that one. Thanks for the suggestion prostuff1, to quote my original post: I ran through the wiki's hardware compatibility list, Unfortunately I didn't find what I wanted, which is why I've come to ask this question in the forums. Quote Link to comment
prostuff1 Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 Thanks for the suggestion ClunkClunk. It looks promising, if no one suggestion a board with onboard video I might just go with that one. Thanks for the suggestion prostuff1, to quote my original post: I ran through the wiki's hardware compatibility list, Unfortunately I didn't find what I wanted, which is why I've come to ask this question in the forums. Yup, I saw the blurb about reading the wiki, but I figured I would point you there again (plus it is easier to type Hardware Compatibility Page and give the link because of my code expansion program). Anyway, your next best bet would be to head towards Newegg and use there advnaced search to narrow down the choices. Gigabyte Intel boards will also be pretty good, so you might want to start there. Quote Link to comment
Yoshi325 Posted December 10, 2009 Author Share Posted December 10, 2009 head towards Newegg and use there advnaced search to narrow down the choices. Gigabyte Intel boards will also be pretty good, so you might want to start there. Thanks for the suggestion. The biggest fear that I have in going about it that way is accidentally getting a board that might create an HPA. Is there a specific thing I should be looking for so that I don't get a MB that has that behavior? Is it only board that support the Dual Virtual BIOS? Quote Link to comment
prostuff1 Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 head towards Newegg and use there advnaced search to narrow down the choices. Gigabyte Intel boards will also be pretty good, so you might want to start there. Thanks for the suggestion. The biggest fear that I have in going about it that way is accidentally getting a board that might create an HPA. Is there a specific thing I should be looking for so that I don't get a MB that has that behavior? Is it only board that support the Dual Virtual BIOS? That is a question I can't answer and would probably best be answered on the gigabyte forum. There was talk about being able to disable this by pressing F1 when you are in the BIOS of the board. The only other way to avoid this is to not get a Gigabyte board. Quote Link to comment
Yoshi325 Posted December 10, 2009 Author Share Posted December 10, 2009 Anything else I need to worry about when going to the NewEgg search method? Are all Intel SATA controllers (IIRC that exists on the SouthBridge?) compatible with unRAID? One of the lines on the wiki states that one of the compatible controllers are: "Intel ICHn" which I'm guessing means ICH + a number, but I'm not sure. So would the ICH7s on the boards below be compatible? A couple of boards I found: GIGABYTE GA-G41MT-ES2L LGA 775 Intel G41 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128418 ASUS P5G41-M LE/CSM LGA 775 Intel G41 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131399 Does anyone have any thoughts on those two selections? Quote Link to comment
prostuff1 Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 Look for boards with 6 SATA ports on it and with room for expansion. Boards with plenty PCI-E x4, x8 and even x1 slot are important. Quote Link to comment
vca Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 You might want to look at Intel's Desktop Boards, I picked up a DQ965GF about a year ago which runs unRAID quite nicely. Its got onboard LAN, video and 6 SATA ports plus a 1x and a 16x PCI Express slot, so you can get to 10 SATA connections quite inexpensively. Stephen Quote Link to comment
Kaygee Posted December 10, 2009 Share Posted December 10, 2009 Once you have found a board you think might work, worth speaking to the companies tech support to see if the x16 slot(s) is/are VGA only. Quote Link to comment
Yoshi325 Posted December 10, 2009 Author Share Posted December 10, 2009 Thank you everyone that has posted so far. Does anyone else have any suggestions? I really want to start this build before newyears. I have plenty of other parts, but the motherboard is the main thing that I need, thats why I'm so doggedly asking for suggestions. Quote Link to comment
lionelhutz Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 HPA issue - Gigabyte has a number of BIOS protection schemes. One called Dual Hardware BIOS protection which used the CMOS for both BIOS versions so it should mean you are OK. Then, they begin with the virtual BIOS protection schemes which appear to write a HPA for the BIOS backup. They also appear to have a version which has both hardware and HPA BIOS backups. On these boards download the manual and see if there is a setting to turn off the hard drive use. CTRL-F1 can bring up more advanced BIOS options. If you look through the WIKI I think there is a post linked about a board and I found that the option was in that manual so you could use that to get an idea what to look for. Looking for boards with more PCIe slots is always a good idea. It seems 4x slots will be required for the higher port count SATA cards. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128371 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130248 Peter Quote Link to comment
starcat Posted December 16, 2009 Share Posted December 16, 2009 Why not going with a server class mainboard, something that will boot headless, with KVM over Ethernet, with ECC protected memory, decent Intel NICs, remote poweron/powerdown, etc. Like the X7SBE is a good fit into that category. It will support C2D and C2Q but I doubt you will ever need something more than C2D with unRAID even if you run Vmware on it! Here is a thread using this board: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=4479.0 Quote Link to comment
Yoshi325 Posted December 17, 2009 Author Share Posted December 17, 2009 Thanks for the info lionelhutz! And thanks for the recommendation starcat; I wasn't even considering server-class motherboards, but I will look into it more now. Quote Link to comment
lionelhutz Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 Something Starcat didn't mention is that Supermicro board is pricy but there is a Supermicro PCI-X to 8-SATAII board available for about $100 and you can easily get to the unRAID disk limits with 2 of them. Overall, it's a decent solution that will have all the speed of a PCIe high disk count solution at a comparible price. Sure PCIe is the new technology but PCI-X works just fine. When a 8-SATAII PCIe card is supported then the PCIe solutions will become quite a bit cheaper. Peter Quote Link to comment
starcat Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 I have heard of people grabing the X7SBE for $50 used or $150 open box, count in 2x $100 for two 8-port SATA cards (PCI-X 64bit 133Mhz) running at 1GB/s each and you are all set. The X7SBE has two PCI-X busses for both cards. 8 disks hanging off 1GB/s controller is more than enough bandwidth. The 6 ports on the mobo hang directly off the Northbridge. Its a decent configuration. And you have an 8x PCIe slot for a card supporting SAS expanders to extend to a second and third chassis (Lime-Tech are working on support for that). So, this config pretty covers it all. Quote Link to comment
Yoshi325 Posted January 29, 2010 Author Share Posted January 29, 2010 Well unfortunately I did not get this project even started before the new year. I have been looking for the X7SBE for less than $200, but haven't found any deals. I really don't want to sink so much money into a motherboard. I'm riding on the assumption that I will be able to just stick with a few drives and upgrade them as capacities get greater. I guess what I'm saying is that I would rather spend the money on drives than a pricier motherboard. I think I will only end up needing around 6Gigs of storage, which can easily be done in a 5 drive configuration. Anyone have any last minute suggestions? Quote Link to comment
daniel.boone Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 What was wrong with the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P? I've been looking at this as a replacement for my ASUS. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128358 video only pcie slots? I may have answered my onw question... humm..maybe not..seems soneone has confirmed support for a 4x pcie sata card. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3739.msg46886#msg46886 Quote Link to comment
starcat Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 Something Starcat didn't mention is that Supermicro board is pricy but there is a Supermicro PCI-X to 8-SATAII board available for about $100 and you can easily get to the unRAID disk limits with 2 of them. Overall, it's a decent solution that will have all the speed of a PCIe high disk count solution at a comparible price. Sure PCIe is the new technology but PCI-X works just fine. Peter, the Supermicro has also a PCIe connector. I am waiting for multiple Volume support and LSI 3442E-R in order to put it there and connect to another 4220 (or 4224) using the HP LSI Expander only in the second case. The big benefit of the Supermicro board is because it is a server it has a dedicated IPMI processor with its own ethernet interface and integrated KVM-over-Ethernet functionality. You won't ever need a keyboard/monitor in order to tweak BIOS settings, nor to get to the console of unRAID. You can even turn on the server remotely. It also supports WOL, has solid onboard Intel NICs (saving slots), etc... Quote Link to comment
starcat Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 Well unfortunately I did not get this project even started before the new year. I have been looking for the X7SBE for less than $200, but haven't found any deals. I really don't want to sink so much money into a motherboard. I'm riding on the assumption that I will be able to just stick with a few drives and upgrade them as capacities get greater. I guess what I'm saying is that I would rather spend the money on drives than a pricier motherboard. I think I will only end up needing around 6Gigs of storage, which can easily be done in a 5 drive configuration. I don't think that you will buy soon 4 or 6TB drives. The step ups are becoming smaller and the price difference bigger. Just compare what a 1.5 and 2TB drive cost per GB. So, upgrading a couple of 2TB drives to 2.5 won't bring you much in terms of capacity and you will be at risk each time pulling out and migrating drives. You may want to take a look at this new Atom board from Supermicro: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5133.0 It has integrated IPMI, CPU, Intel GigE, 6x SATA, etc Quote Link to comment
Yoshi325 Posted January 30, 2010 Author Share Posted January 30, 2010 Thanks for the suggestion daniel.boone, that looks like a pretty nifty board but it is too bad that no one seems to want to go through the bother to get it properly asserted as 'Tested' on the wiki page. I might have gone for your suggestion, but then starcat piped up again ... Wow starcat, you just keep coming up with really good stuff! If newegg stocked the X7SPA I would be buying it right now, but it looks like I'll have to try one of the listed retailers in that thread. As a side note it doesn't exactly match what I requested at the beginning of this thread, but still ends up being Intel and surpasses my needs. If I can actually order this board I think it's the one I'm going to be going with. Maybe I will get to the point where a bigger, bolder server makes sense, but for now that little board will do nicely. Thanks again starcat! Quote Link to comment
Yoshi325 Posted February 11, 2010 Author Share Posted February 11, 2010 Well my orders are in, now I just have to wait for everything to be shipped and arrive. I ended up going with the Supermicro X7SPA, a COOLER MASTER Centurion 590 for the case (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119152) and a couple of drive racks including a KINGWIN KF-4000-BK which is a 4 drive 3 bay setup (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817990004). Hopefully I will be able to help get this board it's marks in the 'tested' column on the Hardware Compatibility page on the wiki. Quote Link to comment
Yoshi325 Posted February 12, 2010 Author Share Posted February 12, 2010 Thanks starcat! I can't wait, but unfortunately they didn't have the board in stock, so supposedly it won't be showing up until next month Quote Link to comment
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