New list for recommended mother board!!Anyone?

[mangledjustice]

I am new to the site..well not really been lurking around for months now, but just signed up. I'm trying to get some parts together and i've been checking out the recommended MB,s but it seems like all those boards are dinosaurs. i'm just curious if there will be some kind of update to the list of boards or do I have to just buy one and wing it and hope it works?

 

[BRiT]

Practically any new/current gen motherboard should work. Those with the Intel H55 chipset work very well with the i3/i5/i7 CPUs.

[mangledjustice]

Thanks for the reply.....funny thing in all the builds Ive done i never use intel i guess its never too late to try something different.

[Rajahal]

These are a bit more up to date:

 

Recommended Builds

[PeterB]

Thanks for the reply.....funny thing in all the builds Ive done i never use intel i guess its never too late to try something different.

 

I've never built an Intel-based PC before, either, but I'm very happy with my Intel DH55TC mobo and i3-530 CPU.

 

I see the Antec Three Hundred case being recommended - it looks fairly similar to the Thermaltake V5 I've used, but I think the disk space is a little more flexible in the Thermaltake.  Using '5 in 3' cages, it should be possible to get 15 drives into the box. http://www.thermaltake.com/product_info.aspx?PARENT_CID=C_00001603&id=C_00001604&name=V5+Black+Edition++&ovid=n

[jtown]

I'm happy with my Supermicro X7SPA-H so far.  It has the new D510 Atom dual-core CPU, 6 SATA ports, 4 lane PCIe (x16 slot but only 4 lanes are active), dual gigabit NICs, USB-A port on the motherboard so you can mount the thumb drive inside the case, up to 4 gigs of RAM.  If I need to go beyond 6 drives, I can add an inexpensive 8-port 4-lane PCIe controller for a total of 14 drives.

 

I wanted low-power, at least 6 SATA ports, and 4-lane PCIe or better.  The X7SPA-H just squeaks in on the ports and PCIe slot and it's a bit spendy but it's definitely low-power.  I have 6 drives attached and, when they're spun down, the whole system's drawing 37 watts on an 85+ power supply.  Streaming video off a single 5400 RPM drive, it runs about 42 watts.  Transcoding to the tivo from the same drive (I just installed pyTivo tonight), it runs around 44 watts.

[BRiT]

For reference, an Intel i3 530 CPU on an H55 motherboard will idle around the same watts as that Intel Atom system.

[PeterB]

If I believe the reports from my UPS, my H55/i3 system is drawing a little more power than jtown reports, but my psu is only specified as 78%.

[mvdzwaan]

I wanted low-power, at least 6 SATA ports, and 4-lane PCIe or better.  The X7SPA-H just squeaks in on the ports and PCIe slot and it's a bit spendy but it's definitely low-power.  I have 6 drives attached and, when they're spun down, the whole system's drawing 37 watts on an 85+ power supply.  Streaming video off a single 5400 RPM drive, it runs about 42 watts.  Transcoding to the tivo from the same drive (I just installed pyTivo tonight), it runs around 44 watts.

 

I'm currently running the X7SPA-HF with additional IPMI support. 12 drives attached, 4 to onboard sata, 8 to AOC-SASLP-MV8 (1 7200.11 1.5, 5x F3 2tb, 6x WD EADS 2tb). Corsair HX520. When spundown the power usage is 54W, during a parity check I'm topping at ~125W.

 

Very pleased so far, IPMI is a bless for a headless server.

 

 

[jtown]

I almost went with an i3 because of the low idle power and potential for much greater processing capacity on demand but I really wanted to play with the new Atom and I liked that its maximum draw is close to the i3's minimum.  The Atom setup was a bit cheaper at $170 delivered vs. $200 or so for an i3 setup with a good motherboard.  I also considered the X7SPA-HF to get IPMI but figured the Matrox hardware would increase power consumption and it was also a considerable price boost at around $215.

 

So far, the Atom's been more than capable of doing what I want.  I can think of some situations where more processing power would be good but they're not things I'll be doing.  The most taxing thing it does is transcode video for my Tivo and the Tivo's pathetic network performance is the bottleneck there.  The Atom ticks along at about 25% during those transfers.  Plenty left over for a bittorrent client (eventually) and a few other services.

 

BTW, my monthly parity check kicked in shortly after I posted last night and, if I recall correctly, it was bouncing between 86 and 87 watts with all 6 drives churning.  Half are 5400-5900 RPM, half are 7200.  The measurement is coming from a kill-a-watt meter.

[jtown]

Just to update on power consumption, I replaced my WD10EACS-00ZJB0 1tb drive with a Samsung HD203WI 2tb drive and it's pulling 82 watts during the rebuild.  That's a drop of about 4.5 watts from replacing a single, old WD Green drive.  (Assuming the rebuild power draw is equivalent to a parity check power draw.  Seems like it should be since it's doing parity calculations and hammering all 6 drives.)  So keep that in mind when shooting for low power consumption.  Makes me wish those 7200 RPM Hitachis hadn't been in sale when I decided to start building. 

[BRiT]

That's kind of odd, as WD specs the EACs similar to the EADS/EARS. For what it's worth, here's the numbers both mfgs list.

 

2TB EADS/EARS:

Read/Write 6.00 Watts

Idle 3.70 Watts

Standby 0.80 Watts

Sleep 0.80 Watts

 

2TB HD203WI:

Read/Write (typical) 6.2W

Idle (typical) 5.4W

Standby (typical) 1W

Sleep (typical) 1W

[jtown]

This is the old 1tb, 4-platter EACS.  Entirely different drive.  Even less efficient than the 1tb EACS from 2008, I'm sure, tho I can't find detailed specs regarding power consumption.  I can only go by the reduction in measured power consumption.

[jtown]

Swapping a 1.5tb Seagate 7200.11 drive with another 2tb Samsung brought the power draw down to around 78.5 watts.