Best/most problem free motherboard for Unraid with AMD AM3 socket?

[pras1011]

I am having problems searching for a good AMD motherboard.

 

Can someone suggest some?

[eamesz]

Hi pras,

 

Ié just bought the ASUS M4A78LT-M LE (I wanted the M4A78LT-M but it wasn't available). It has all items you want (6 sata, PCI-E etc etc) BUT there is one issue: The onboard Network chip isn't fully supported and doesn't work without problems). So stick in a cheapass gigabit pci networkcard and all will be solved. The only thing you have to do is to disable the onboard NIC in the bios.

 

I've installed the AMD Sempron 140 (power enough for unraid), a sata extention card (2 ports) and a Sweex Gigabit networkcard.

 

Motherboard has an onboard graphics-card so all will work!

 

Kind regards,

 

Erwin

[joshpond]

I had the Australian budget build board I think the ASUS M4A785T-M on the hardware wiki and that ran fine with 4 drives. I tried the Supermicro in it and it booted fine, the main reason I changed from it is the lack of expansion. I think I would have maxed out at about 16 drives before things started to slow down.

 

Josh

[DoeBoye]

I'm using a Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-UD4H. Looks like you can still get it for around $130 or so. Flawless install. No problems. HPA can be disabled easily in Bios (do a search on Gigabyte and HPA if you don't know what it is). 6 SATA ports, gigabit ethernet, 5 PCI-e slots! (16x, 8x, 3 1x). I currently have the 16x (which runs as 8x when the 8x is also populated), 8x and a 1x slot populated with 3132 controllers.

 

It's a bit pricey (was more when I bought it), but easily supports the maximum number of drives.

[pras1011]

Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-UD4H does support the AM3 .

 

Asus seems to have a confusing model numbering system.

 

Its seems to me that every board seems have a problem!

[kenoka]

Newer Gigabyte boards all have HPA off by default, so it's a non-issue unless you turn it on. After having both a Gigabyte and Asus board for the same server, I have to say I've been MUCH happier with the Gigabyte. I first built the server with the Gigabyte GA-MA780-S2H, and it was as easy as could be. I didn't have to mess with anything. Everything worked fine, until I added a Supermicro SAS card to the mix. At that point, I had major issues, but it turns out I had a bad PCI-E slot. I never knew this, since I'd always used the onboard video before. I've sent that board back to Gigabyte for RMA replacement. They were excellent, by the way, and issued the RMA quickly.

 

The Asus board was bought to fill in for the Gigabyte, and it was an unmitigated nightmare. It wouldn't boot, and I spent hours working on it. Others have reported issues with the board switching their boot device every time they add a drive. If you want to see my whole saga, it's toward the end of this thread: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7422.0

 

And even after I finally got the Asus board working, I noticed that it had a much slower boot time than my Gigabyte board did. This could be due to the difference in CPUs as well. The Gigabyte had an Athlon 5200+, vs. a Sempron 140 on the Asus.

[kenoka]

And if I were building from scratch, I'd go for the newer 880 or 890 northbridge. It's not that much more, and it will support DDR3. I got the board I did because I wanted to reuse DDR2 RAM that I already had. But if you're buying now, go for DDR3.

 

I'd probably go for something like this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128445

 

It has two PCI-E slots: one at x16 and one x4. That should provide plenty of expansion potential. It also supports USB 3.0 and SATA 3. Those aren't of big concern in the unRAID world, but they might be in future.

 

In terms of price, it costs about $100 vs. about $70. You can either look at that as 43% more, or $30 more. In absolute terms, it's not a lot more. In percentage terms, it is.

[pras1011]

Maybe I should have gone the Gigabyte route as I want the least amount of pain but I have ordered the M4A89GTD PRO/USB3 motherboard over the weekend.

 

Watch this space!