Intel (Core 2 or >) Motherboard Recomendation

[purko]

unfortunately they didn't have the board in stock, so supposedly it won't be showing up until next month

Which X7SPA was it? (L, H, or HF) 

And where did you order it from?

 

[Yoshi325]

It was an X7SPA-HF-O from Wired Zone as linked to by aiden in the Supermicro X7SPA L/H/HF ATOM serverboards thread.

[purko]

It was an X7SPA-HF-O from Wired Zone as linked to by aiden in the Supermicro X7SPA L/H/HF ATOM serverboards thread.

 

Looks like Atacom have it in stock, and at a little better price too.

Get them on the phone (877-428-2266) during business hours and confirm that.

If they confirm, then you may be able to cancel that other order and save yourself a whole month of waiting.

 

[Yoshi325]

Thanks purko, I was just nervous about them since they didn't even have a picture of the product (silly I know). I will definitely give them a call tomorrow. Oh, and with shipping it ends up being slightly more than wired, 216.80.

[purko]

Oh, and with shipping it ends up being slightly more than wired, 216.80.

Well, when you talk to them, make sure you mention that.

Reasonable merchants would notmally match competitor's prices.

Don't mention Wired's one month waiting time though!   

 

[Yoshi325]

I will definitely do that, but I fear it won't budge them. They say right on their website under the 'Policies' page that they don't do price matching. Even in spite of that I will still give it a run and see if they can bring it down a smidge.

[Nyago123]

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 ...

 

Yeah, that would be me you're talking about...    There's a couple of other threads for the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P, but I could have easily have validated it for Level 2 by now.  It certainly passes Level 1.

 

My setup:

Intel E5200

8 GB Kingston RAM

2x SYBA SD-SA2PEX-2IR in PCI-E 1x slots

1x LSI SAS3081E-R in a PCI-E 16x slot (not doing me any good right now under this kernel)

ATI Rage XL in a PCI slot for video

 

I've attached a syslog here showing almost 40 days of continuous uptime (took out some domain specific stuff for privacy)... some of what kept me unable to do Level 2 validation was that I had been running the 4.5 betas and at the moment I only have 5 HDDs (albeit all 2TB)... well, not counting the 160GB cache drive attached to the system which I am not actually using at all (though you can spot it in the syslog), and I didn't do a parity check on startup per the Level 2 reqs, but I normally do one every 30 days.  Maybe when I add the next 2TB drive (which I think I will do in the very near future), I'll bump to 4.5.1, do a parity check, and in a month or so after that I can call it Level 2 tested and post results in a new thread (or one of the old ones).

 

But it sounds like you got a good board anyway and the Gigabyte is certainly not Micro-ATX.  Good luck!

syslog-2010-02-12.txt

[Yoshi325]

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 ...

 

Yeah, that would be me you're talking about...     There's a couple of other threads for the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P, but I could have easily have validated it for Level 2 by now.  It certainly passes Level 1.

 

My setup:

Intel E5200

8 GB Kingston RAM

2x SYBA SD-SA2PEX-2IR in PCI-E 1x slots

1x LSI SAS3081E-R in a PCI-E 16x slot (not doing me any good right now under this kernel)

ATI Rage XL in a PCI slot for video

 

I've attached a syslog here showing almost 40 days of continuous uptime (took out some domain specific stuff for privacy)... some of what kept me unable to do Level 2 validation was that I had been running the 4.5 betas and at the moment I only have 5 HDDs (albeit all 2TB)... well, not counting the 160GB cache drive attached to the system which I am not actually using at all (though you can spot it in the syslog), and I didn't do a parity check on startup per the Level 2 reqs, but I normally do one every 30 days.  Maybe when I add the next 2TB drive (which I think I will do in the very near future), I'll bump to 4.5.1, do a parity check, and in a month or so after that I can call it Level 2 tested and post results in a new thread (or one of the old ones).

 

But it sounds like you got a good board anyway and the Gigabyte is certainly not Micro-ATX.  Good luck!

 

 

No sweat man, I can't expect from someone else what I haven't taken the time and effort to do myself. If I build another one of these I might go for the Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P, we'll see. If you're going for the Level 2 testing, I'm rooting for you!

[Yoshi325]

Well I finally got a chance to call Atacom and they don't have it in stock.    I'm not shocked, but it would have been a nice surprise to find out that they had it.

 

Oh! I almost forgot to mention, the first parts came Saturday. The two preloaded USB Thumbdrives from Limetech showed up; talk about service, they were the last order, but the first parts to arrive. I spent most of Sunday wondering if I should try and fire up some of the ancient machines I have around and see if it would boot unRAID at all, lol. I guess my Case is waiting at home, and all the other parts (save the Motherboard) are scheduled to show up tomorrow. The anticipation just might kill me. I can't believe I have to wait until next friggin' month just to put this thing together.

[Yoshi325]

It's finally here!  All put together and running. I'll have to get some pictures up. Thanks again everyone that has helped me on this build.