Hi guys,
What are you recommendations on rock solid motherboard/cpu combos for linux? Thinking for server type setups onboard everything is ok as long as it's supported.
Cheers,
Ben
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On 2004-01-12 21:57:19 +0000 Ben Norcutt ben@plextech.co.uk wrote:
What are you recommendations on rock solid motherboard/cpu combos for linux? Thinking for server type setups onboard everything is ok as long as it's supported.
Avoid PC-Chips. Gigabyte seem OK. I put a Tyan in a recent server and that works well, but you have to forage for drivers for some of it. Most of my kit is probably too old to be relevant now, anyway. How quickly things change...
On Monday 12 Jan 2004 10:25 pm, MJ Ray wrote:
On 2004-01-12 21:57:19 +0000 Ben Norcutt ben@plextech.co.uk
wrote:
What are you recommendations on rock solid motherboard/cpu combos for linux? Thinking for server type setups onboard everything is ok as long as it's supported.
Avoid PC-Chips.
That's interesting - can you give more details? They do some very cheap boards that do get good reviews (but maybe the fact that they are so cheap is the problem?)
Gigabyte seem OK.
FWIW, the technician at my current school (who seems to know what he is doing) uses Gigabyte for the boxes he rebuilds there, on cost/reliability grounds.
I put a Tyan in a recent server and that works well, but you have to forage for drivers for some of it. Most of my kit is probably too old to be relevant now, anyway. How quickly things change...
Are/were there some issues with certain VIA chipsets and linuxfairly recently? More info/advice on that would be useful if anyone has some.
Syd
On Tue, Jan 13, 2004 at 05:29:23AM +0000, Syd Hancock wrote:
On Monday 12 Jan 2004 10:25 pm, MJ Ray wrote:
On 2004-01-12 21:57:19 +0000 Ben Norcutt ben@plextech.co.uk
wrote:
What are you recommendations on rock solid motherboard/cpu combos for linux? Thinking for server type setups onboard everything is ok as long as it's supported.
Avoid PC-Chips.
That's interesting - can you give more details? They do some very cheap boards that do get good reviews (but maybe the fact that they are so cheap is the problem?)
I think the "Avoid PC-Chips" dates from a year or two ago when one particular PC-Chips motherboard claimed an exaggerated clock speed and was notoriously flakey if you tried to run it at the quoted speed. It became a bit of a 'cause celebre'.
I believe current PC_Chips motherboards are OK. I saw one recent review that referred to the earlier problems and said essentially, "this one is OK though".
I have to admit that I have avoided PC_Chips motherboards since then though, there are lots of alternatives whose prices are low enough. The cost of the motherboard isn't usually a huge proportion of the system cost so saving a fiver or so probably isn't worth it.
I've bought Asus and, just recently, an Epox motherboard and have had no problems.
Gigabyte seem OK.
FWIW, the technician at my current school (who seems to know what he is doing) uses Gigabyte for the boxes he rebuilds there, on cost/reliability grounds.
I put a Tyan in a recent server and that works well, but you have to forage for drivers for some of it. Most of my kit is probably too old to be relevant now, anyway. How quickly things change...
Are/were there some issues with certain VIA chipsets and linuxfairly recently? More info/advice on that would be useful if anyone has some.
There certainly were issues with VIA chipsets and USB, I had that problem on a non-Linux system. It still occasionally fails to boot (WIn2k BSOD) but once booted is stable.
On 2004-01-13 05:29:23 +0000 Syd Hancock syd@toufol.com wrote:
Avoid PC-Chips.
That's interesting - can you give more details?
I've had one board give very poor performance (M599LMR) and two PC-Chips boards fail under warranty. I know that's far from reliable proof, but I've not had that bad experience with any other maker. Driver support is only a little worse than some other boards.
I put a Tyan in a recent server and that works well, but you have to
Are/were there some issues with certain VIA chipsets and linuxfairly recently? More info/advice on that would be useful if anyone has some.
The tyan has VIA chipsets, as does my laptop. The only thing on the tyan that caused trouble after I found the drivers was the temperature sensing. The laptop has an endearing habit of going "Machine Check Exception" when a certain PCMCIA card is activated, but works otherwise.
On Tue, Jan 13, 2004 at 05:29:23AM +0000, Syd Hancock wrote:
On Monday 12 Jan 2004 10:25 pm, MJ Ray wrote:
Avoid PC-Chips.
That's interesting - can you give more details? They do some very cheap boards that do get good reviews (but maybe the fact that they are so cheap is the problem?)
I have heard things about PC-Chips using stolen Bios revisions and fake cloned chips, also using dodgy capacitors that will die after 18 months. etc. etc.
I can't confirm these stories first hand, but I have heard enough to not make me want to bother with them, good boards from experience have been those made by Asus (3yr warranty as standard) Abit, A-Open and MSI.
Oh, and I have had no problems with Via chipsets in Linux, have been using them for years they are probably one of the better makers out there. I would avoid things based on ALi chipsets though :) I think the problems with Via chipsets came from some bad integrations by motherboard manufacturers.
Adam
On 12 Jan 2004, at 21:57, Ben Norcutt wrote:
What are you recommendations on rock solid motherboard/cpu combos for linux? Thinking for server type setups onboard everything is ok as long as it's supported.
We are using Gigabyte motherboards along with AMD XP2200+ CPUs in MTH @ UEA. Rock solid motherboard and it works (tm).
Google/IRC (oh and ebuyer.com ;) is your friend.
C
On Monday 12 January 2004 21:57, Ben Norcutt wrote:
Hi guys,
What are you recommendations on rock solid motherboard/cpu combos for linux? Thinking for server type setups onboard everything is ok as long as it's supported.
Avoid Nforce based chipsets, as you'll be stuck with Binary only drivers. (not so bad with an easily replaceable graphics card, more of a pain with a system board)
I supplied some Linux friendly machines a little while ago, everything was easy to get working in Debian stable with the exception of the SATA interface (which we weren't using). I'll try and dig up the spec from the office.
On Tue, Jan 13, 2004 at 08:44:52AM +0000, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
On Monday 12 January 2004 21:57, Ben Norcutt wrote:
Hi guys,
What are you recommendations on rock solid motherboard/cpu combos for linux? Thinking for server type setups onboard everything is ok as long as it's supported.
Avoid Nforce based chipsets, as you'll be stuck with Binary only drivers. (not so bad with an easily replaceable graphics card, more of a pain with a system board)
Oh god yeah, I had an Nforce 1 based board which only had generic IDE support in Linux and a non-free Lan driver, the performance of it really really sucked. Oh, and I didn't buy it, my boss did because it was 3 quid cheaper than the board I recommended so he thought he had "saved" money" but the 3 days it took me to get the thing stable were obviously "free".
Definetly avoid Nforce :)
Adam
On Monday 12 January 2004 21:57, Ben Norcutt wrote:
Hi guys,
What are you recommendations on rock solid motherboard/cpu combos for linux? Thinking for server type setups onboard everything is ok as long as it's supported.
Cheers,
Ben
In November I put SuSE 9.0 on an EPoX 8KRA2 which for about £170 came from Ebuyer with a 2.8GHz Athlon. It has a VIA chipset, sound, USB2, FireWire, SATA, parallel and serial RAID, DDR400, network, etc. Everything appears to work fine. All the user reviews are good, too.
-- GT
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