Hey all, Can anyone recommend me a decent Intel (preferably) Mobo that can take a 3rd gen I5/I7 CPU, 16-64GB RAM and wouldn't have any nasty marvel chipsets on it? Going to be running a linux server on it that'll end up in a rack so nothing fancy in regards to PCIe 16x etc (will need 1 I guess for the raid card) but no need for SLI/xfire etc etc
Price range? Is is it going to be doing thing other than server work? For what you're describing you may be better off with a Xeon E-series and relevant board
Basic fileserver but with quite a large user base hitting it so needs quite a bit of ram. Price range - well hopefully under 200 for cpu/mobo combo. but can pay more if needed.
If you're going to use it as a server and mount it in a rack, you might as well use ECC memory, especially if you intend to leave it running for the next few years and anything that's going through it is important. It's not an absolute must, but nowadays you can do it for the same price as building a regular PC. Now you said that you'd prefer Intel for this, and I don't blame you. The problem with Intel is that it doesn't enable ECC on their consumer CPUs and chipsets. You have to go for a Xeon and a workstation/server mainboard. It might get more expensive and they're not available in all the regular shops. However, if you're not dead set to go with Intel, give AMD a try. Their FX series supports ECC even on the lowest SKUs. Asus officially supports ECC on their motherboards. Go for a cheap one with a 970 chipset. Gigabyte is said to work with ECC too, but they don't advertise this. To be on the safe side, go with Asus. Now an FX-6300 will not be very expensive and will run quite well. Linux support for the Bulldozer architecture is much better than Windows'. Also, don't worry about it having a higher TDP than Intel's Ivy Bridge. It's a well known fact that it's idle power consumption is better than Intel's and if it's going to be just a file server, it won't even get close to TDP values. Of course, the ECC RAM we're talking about is of the unbuffered type (or sometimes referred to as "unregistered"), such as this one: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/16gb-%284x4gb%29-hynix-ddriii-pc3-10600-%281333mhz%29-240-pin-non-ecc-unbuffered-cl9 A final piece of advice: if you're going to share files to a windows network, pick the CPU with the highest per-core performance, not the highest number of cores. This is because Samba is by design single-threaded. Intel has an advantage here, but it will probably take a lot of simultaneous accesses to actually see the difference between Ivy Bridge and Piledriver.
I'd go for ECC but it's sooo much more expensive and as such would rather take the hit on bad files in the long run - there's nothing hugely important on the box. Just want to make sure the mobo works well with linux (ubuntu server) as some chipsets really don't work well in linux :/ so basically looking for a bog standard boring motherboard that can take quite a bit of ram and a newer cpu
Well, all Sandy/Ivy Bridge boards are limited to 32GB, including boards for Xeon E3 (ASUS P8B WS, ASUS P8BC WS and few Intel boards) : http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asus...a-iii-6gb-s-sata-raid-pcie-30-(x16)-dvi-i-atx Supports both ECC and non-ECC RAM, Socket 1155 desktop and Xeon E3 CPU and what is important - VT-d (desktop boards don't support his one except Q67 boards). The question is, do you need this ? If not, then you can go for some H77 or B75 board (depending on your SATA3 needs) and call it a day.
Fung - thanks for thie info Don't really need the VT stuff at all as nothing is going to be virtualised on the box. As for SATA3 stuff, it's all going to be handled by an LSI raid card so not important either - 2 or so onboard ports would be good though for OS disk etc. 32GB RAM should be plenty
Well, then you should choose H77 over B75, because B75 has 1x SATA3 & 5x SATA2, while H77 has 2x SATA3 & 4x SATA2. Z68/Z77 is pointless unless you get it for the same price as H77 (overclock is pointless for non-K CPU), H67 is the older gen, H61 has no SATA3. In case of the LSI card check if it supports 3TB+ drives, because some don't (for example LSI SAS1068E based ones don't, like my Intel SASUC8I). Choose CPU according to your needs and budget (from Celeron G5xx for cheap dualcore up to Core i7-3770K for highend quadcore with HT).
Any recommendations for an H77 mobo then? or are they all basically the same? LSI Card is this LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i but it's only going to be taking 2TB disks at the moment.
http://mycusthelp.info/LSI/_cs/AnswerDetail.aspx?inc=8009 Your card is fine for >2TB drives. In case of motherboards, i would suggest getting an ASUS board, but it is really up to your manufacturer preference and required features. Can't really recommend one without deeper knowledge what feature you consider important or not.
Ok, so : 1) budget? 2) form factor (mATX, ATX, ITX) ? 3) what display ports ? 4) eSATA ? 5) NIC manufacturer requirement ? Realtek ? Atheros ? Intel ? Maybe you need dual NIC ?
Budget - 200-500 hopefully Form factor - any, it's going in a rack case that can hold almost anything display - vga preferred but DVI acceptable eSATA - nope NIC - Intel if possible but I've got a couple of PCIe intel cards if not.
Well : 1) I would still consider ASUS P8C WS (Asus) as the highend option for you, as you can put ECC/non-ECC, got dual Intel NIC, got DVI-I (so you can make a D-SUB from it), you can put in it anything from single core Sandy Bridge Celerons up to Ivy Bridge Xeon E3 v2, you got pretty much all the features, and if you need it can overclock too. The rest of the boards in the "Socket 1155 - Xeon™ (single)" and "Socket 1155 - Xeon™ (single) - mATX" categories at Scan are fine for your requirements too. Unfortunately none of those boards are in stock, but they are probably worth the money in case of a server. 2) Intel NIC pretty much eliminates cheap non-Intel motherboards (up until 150€ they are the only ones with Intel NIC, everyone else has Realtek or Atheros), and Intel boards are somewhat missing at Scan. Where are you going to get your components at ? Edit: I mean i am missing Intel boards like DH77KC (Intel).
I would look at barebone low end server from HP, Dell, IBM etc and then add the required extras given the majority are certified for Enterprise Linux out of the box.
How is it expensive? That kit (4x4GB) I've linked to is £67. How cheap can you find 16 GB of non-ECC RAM?
