ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe

[Chris Pollard]

Anyone using this board for unRAID?  

 

http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=KC8yHOfBMCe9SlrP

 

Seems like a decent board,  combined with a low power AM2+ CPU.  

 

EDIT : obviously its an old board.... fleabay special

 

 

 

 

[Rajahal]

4 PCIe x 16 slots!  That's a lot of expandability options...

 

AMD Sempron 140 should work as a low power CPU for this board (it is AM3 but it works on AM2+ boards).

 

My only concern is this - does it have gigabit LAN?  I didn't see anything about it in the specs, only stuff about the built in wifi (which will be useless for unRAID).

 

Edit: Nevermind, looks like it does have gigabit LAN:

ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe/WiFi AM2+/AM2 AMD 790FX ATX AMD Motherboard

 

No onboard video, but with 4 PCIe slots and 2 PCI slots, its no big deal to 'waste' one on a cheap, passively cooled video card.

 

I say go for it, as long as it is cheap enough.  How much are they asking for it?

[Chris Pollard]

£40, already bought it for something else but I thought it might be better for unraid than my current board.

 

Also bought one of these AMD Athlon 64 2650e although I'm not 100% sure it will work,  but already have a spare CPU that will fit so no big deal if it doesn't

 

EDIT : Also not sure if you will be able to use the PCI slots with cards in the PCIe slots, sometimes you can't. 

[Rajahal]

Great, well, give them both a shot.  Add them to the hardware compatibility list if they work out.

[bcbgboy13]

If you intend to use 2650e with the M3A32-MVP you are shooting yourself in the foot as you combine the absolute power miser 15W TDP CPU with the power sucking monster 790FX.

 

790FX is/was top of the line AMD chipset from the 7xx series, however if was designed and manufactured around the older 65nm technology (I believe the others are on 55 nm). This is the one AMD calls the chipset for the "ultimate gamer" but it runs literally "hot" and needs a heatpipe or a shipset fan.

Also it does not have integrated GPU so you will need a separate video (and a few watts there too).

 

If you want low power - you should look for something based on 740G.

 

 

[Chris Pollard]

What I'm really after is PCIe slots, I'm not even convinced the CPU will work in the board.

[Rajahal]

If your CPU doesn't work, you can try out the Sempron 140 for pretty cheap:

 

Sempron 140

 

By the way, how many drives are you hoping to support?  Assuming each PCIe slot can take a SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8, that board should theoretically be able to handle 36 drives (4 onboard + 4 x 8 SuperMicro PCIe expansion cards).  Those cards cost about $100 each and require cables that cost $15-30 each, so that's a substantial investment.  But it would be INSANE.

 

Of course unRAID's limit is currently 22 drives...

 

BTW, $62 (£40) is a great deal for that board, since the ones for sale when I searched that board were all around $285 (~£183).

[Chris Pollard]

Yeah,  bought it on ebay, thats why its so cheap.  Planning on adding an extra AOC-SASLP-MV8, rest of the system will be the same as my sig.

[Kaygee]

I had a 2650e working fine in a M32N-sli so you should be fine. Update the boards bios to the latest version. The two boards (XFX and Asus) I tried would not name it correctly, but detected the correct bus and multiplier. 200MHz x 8 if your stuck. Performance is resonable about twice an atom 510 15w and AM2. 1000Mhz HT.

[Chris Pollard]

I had a 2650e working fine in a M32N-sli so you should be fine. Update the boards bios to the latest version. The two boards (XFX and Asus) I tried would not name it correctly, but detected the correct bus and multiplier. 200MHz x 8 if your stuck. Performance is resonable about twice an atom 510 15w and AM2. 1000Mhz HT.

Yeah seems to be working fine in my gigabyte board despite not being listed as compatible.  Hopefully get around to testing the new board sometime over the weekend and getting some power measurements.

[Chris Pollard]

Installed this motherboard last night, working fine.  Had some issues trying to get an old ancient PCI VGA card to work however so ended up using a PCIe one for now.