Looking for cheap compatible mb

[RockDawg]

I am really confused about which boards are compatible with unraid.  By that I mean fully function AND full performance.  I am looking for a board the uses DDR memory rather than DDR2 since I have a bunch of DDR lying around.  I would prefer it to be AMD since I have quite a few Athlons and Athlon64s lying around, but it seems most AMD boards have IDE performance issues.  I'm willing to go Intel, but again I would prefer to stay with DDR and most seem to be DDR2 nowadays.  Is there anything that fits the bill for me?  Does 4.0 solve any of the IDE speed issues on AMD boards (or is there one that works well that I just don't know about?)?  Is there an Intel DDR board that is still fairly easy to find that works well?

 

I should mention that I have mostly IDE drives (~12) along with a couple SATA.

[limetech]

Motherboard support, esp. for AMD, is much better in unRAID 4.x because it's based on the 2.6 linux kernel.  You should try to find the "newest" board that fits your requirements.  Sorry I can't give a specific recommendation because we currently don't evaluate many AMD based motherboards.

[RockDawg]

Sorry I can't give a specific recommendation because we currently don't evaluate many AMD based motherboards.

 

What AMD mobos have you tried?

[limetech]

Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe - and it's been awhile 

[cheezdog]

I am currently running the following AMD system:

 

AMD Sempron64 3000+ socket am2

Asus M2NPV-VM Motherboard

2x512 mb Corsair ram

3x500 gb Samsung drives

Seasonic 330W

Memorex 512mb usb drive

Unraid 4 final

 

It has been running without a hiccup for about a month now. I haven't tested the read/write speed, but it works well serving media. The whole thing was fairly cheap to build, too. Would I recommend it to someone else? SURE! 

 

[cheezdog]

Oops..just saw you are looking for a ddr board..I've got an msi k8n neo4 that I tried briefly w/Unraid and it did work. Problem with that is, they aren't cheap if you can even find 'em.

[RockDawg]

limetech - That figures, I recently gave away an old Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe system to a family member.  Thanks for the input anyhow.

 

cheezdog - Thanks for the tip.  I gave up on trying to utilize my ancient left overs.  I just bought a cheap Intel 775 system just to help ensure I get it up and running soon.  In fact the hardware should be here today.  I have two servers that I want to port over to unRAID, so I'll try an AMD solution on the next go around.  The next time you do a parity check, could you check the speeds for me?

[cheezdog]

I did say that I hadn't done any read/write testing, but I do remember the speed shown during the last parity check. I ran it a week or so ago when I moved from 4beta10 to 4 final. I saw speeds in the 70k kb/s - 74k kb/s range. Of course it started out fast, then slowed down. I didn't see as drastic of a drop off in speed as I thought I would during the check. That is, however, with only 3 drives (2+parity) in the system.

[limetech]

...

I gave up on trying to utilize my ancient left overs.  I just bought a cheap Intel 775 system just to help ensure I get it up and running soon.  ...

 

That is a very wise approach.  The price of PC hardware is so cheap it really doesn't pay to try and get an old system to work.  Remember you don't need the fastest CPU, RAM or the absolute latest motherboard.  You shouldn't have to spend more than say $150 for all these components (probably less) for a fast & reliable unRAID server.

 

My "rule of thumb" has been: if it has built-in GigE, then it's proabably "new" enough.  Having said this, I would add, "should have at least 2nd generation GigE chip".  For example, the A7N8X-E Deluxe does work, but it's USB boot handling is pretty bad - if I remember, it would only work at USB1.1 speeds (which is dog-slow).  And no way is Asus going to do any more bios updates for that board.

 

So get a relatively new motherboard, a cheap processor (2GHz+), a couple sticks of 512MB ram, and put your money in a high-quality power supply and enclosure.  My 2 cents.