Motherboard Recommendations Please.

[JNibski]

...........Good link B-W.....also on the AMD website there are "recommended" boards for ff to see...

i recommend certain brands because i am a pc technician

...I guess i'm chopped liver.

Just as in ARCHITECTURE - two different Architects might not agree on certain things...

Like I said, there are good products and poor products with EVERY mfg - no one has a monopoly on "quality"... its just too competitive.

A lot has to do with the CHIPSET combinations used on a particular motherboard, and years ago Nvidia got lucky with their setup the first time out of the box, mating with AMD....

Titus, you might be an INTEL guy - I'm an AMD guy ...

As you say things in the MB world are getting complicated - much of this is due to the fact that MICROSOFT holds the strings ...You cannot deny that a good percentage of PC motherboards are designed for WINDOWS...How many are designed for 'LINUX'...?
This is the inherent problem us Linux users/builders are having to deal with...its that simple.

Regarding brands - One of the fastest MB's I ever used for a LINSPIRE build, {about 8 years ago} was an ATX sized SYNTAX brand....they were probably junk , but i mustave gotten a "good" one....its still running fine on a seniors machine today...  I'll have to ask him if i could come over to check out the chipset combination on that MB (model# etc}....There's been a lot of water under the bridge, since then, and i probably have misplaced the specs....It'll be interesting {at least for posterity sake...} to see what combo was used....I know i used a SPARKLE 300 watt power supply back then...and he cleans the tower out religiously with air every 6 months or so...he originally ran LINSPIRE, then I switched him to KDE pclos 2007 - then GNOME, now he's running LXDE - and it really flies...

....I have had good luck with most of my motherboard purchases because I am a small time operator who does his homework...Each "build" is CUSTOM and designed per application, I take my time........Many MB problems occur from a rough/shoddy install with little/no precautions taken, etc...When it comes to power supplies, many of the lower priced ones don't last long...etc. I tell clients to count on spending in upwards of $50.plus- for a decent one, this is NOT where you want to skimp.

A successful Windows build is easy - one has to know whats proven to work with linux , in order for it NOT to have any problems -especially with all the various "NEW" stuff coming out....The LINUX developers/programmers are not paid for their services like their competitors are...I praise them highly.

MB's for LINUX? : it's a crapshoot out there.

I suppose ff103 could always buy a MAC...!    

JN

[T6]

no, i am not a intel guy, i am a amd fan but i am as impartial as possible 

" i'm chopped liver"

nice to meet you mr liver   

"You cannot deny that a good percentage of PC motherboards are designed for WINDOWS...How many are designed for 'LINUX'...?"

most of the pcs i had used work with linux to a certain degree, most of them offer problems with the video card or ethernet adapter but a vast majority is cooperative, specially laptops, things have changed drastically in the last 10 years

"A successful Windows build is easy - one has to know whats proven to work with linux , in order for it NOT to have any problems"

i never buy thinking in linux, i tried to do that with the netbook but i ended up buying a different model than the one recommended 

surprisingly all my hardware works with linux without problems, the only device that gave me problems and i had to ask for help was my scanner and this forum gave me the answer very quickly

linux is not a delicate toy anymore, it is a good all terrain vehicle

[matt167]

I have a Biostar A770- E3 mobo, AMD Athlon II X2 445 Rana ( 3.1 GHZ cores ). 2gb of DDR3 kingston valueram along with a Palit Geforce GTS 250 vid card. and it is rock solid with PCLOS.. it's in a Cooler Master Elite case with a 630W Rosewill power supply.

[JNibski]

Matt- This is good to hear! ...and many will benefit from this information.... I hope this setup will last you till the internet changes...

...I have found that LINUX {in general} does not "need" the newer stuff-thus eliminating some of the complications with VIDEO chipsets, etc...BUT the maybe difficult scenario that is arising is trying to fine "NEW" old stuff....

HERE is an IMPORTANT SITE to use as a guide for LINUX MOTHERBOARDs :   http://hardware4linux.info/type/159/

....The Problem with motherboard selection -is the mfg's have to get 'RID" of a lot - before the newer mdls get released....I'm still waiting for the "imbedded" Solid State harddrive models-with no moving parts to become affordable...they are already here with no CPU fans {heatsinks}....just a matter of time.

Mr. Liver.

[ff103]

Thank you matt167, I was just getting ready to look at some Biostar boards. I'll have a look at the 770.

[JNibski]

>   >   >   Top ten motherboards today- March 2011..       

JN

[Refugee]

What do you think of Gigabyte motherboards?
I an thinking of buying one here in the UK with RAM and processor. Bench tested with 3 year warranty.
It is a MA74GMT "AMD mid level package".
The full spec is on:-
http://www.cclonline.com/product-categories.asp?category_id=491
It is to replace a single core unit with 500mb old DDR RAM
The 500W power unit showed no heat stress last time i took it to bits to cleaned it.
 

[T6]

the link you gave is a long list of mainboards and cpus

can you give a more precise link to the promotion you want?

the one of the left or the right

both offers uses the same mainboard a gigabyte ma74gmt-s2

it uses a integrated amd radeon 2100, are you going to use it or are you going to put another video card in it?

[JerryP]

Here's what I got 6 months ago;

2 x MEM 2G|A-DATA AX3U1600GB2G9-CG R
1 x CPU AMD|ATH II X4 640 3.0G AM3 RT
1 x MB ASUS M4A78T-E AM3 790GX/SB750 RT
cost about $275.00
I put it in the case I had with a 400W PS and used a 1Gb Nvidia video card I had bought a year or so ago.
The only "problem" I had was that I also installed a 1TB HDD and in copying PCLOS to the new HDD the bootloader got screwed up and I had to reinstall the OS. This was only a minor inconvenience.

So my mobo recommendation is ASUS with an AMD Quad and nothing less than 4 gigs of memory. I'm pretty sure that I can do "everything".

[horusfalcon]

Hmm... I'm late to all the good parties lately.

Some lively discussion here sparked by such an apparently straightforward question.  Let me see what I can add.

I've used motherboards from a wide variety of manufacturers, and the only real dogs I've encountered were made by Foxconn - they just seemed poorly integrated, had quirky "features" that were really bugs, and of generally poor quality.  Foxconn also makes the iPad for Apple, though, and it appears to be good hardware so far... go figure.  I'm kinda in agreement with Mr. Chopped Liver about the quality or lack thereof with various brand names.  Somebody who consistently makes bad hardware doesn't last long in the motherboard business.  With that said, consider the following:

About three years back I bought a PC for my wife from LinPC.us and I got to know the fellow running that outfit, a nice guy name of Eric.  He was using MSI motherboards back then and liked them from a price/performance standpoint, and from a reliability standpoint as well.  I remember posting a review of that system when it arrived, and it seems I recall being pleasantly surprised by the overall fit and finish of the system - everything in it was first-rate and that price was a steal.  It arrived minus some RAM, but a phone call and a UPS truck later that problem was solved and very quickly.

So... if all you need is a motherboard, you could do worse than to check what LinPC.us is using because they ship systems with PCLinuxOS pre-installed and guaranteed to work.  (They publish the model numbers of components they use).  Note that they are still using MSI boards with integrated Nvidia display adapters.

If you need a new system, you could do a whole lot worse than to consider buying from them - a portion of your purchase goes to support PCLinuxOS, and you get a good system at a good price.

In recent years they had taken to selling both Intel and AMD hardware, but today's web page shows a strictly AMD lineup - probably because AMD is hard to beat for price/performance.  In my own experience, both manufacturer's hardware has strengths and weaknesses: AMD tends to run hotter and need better cooling, Intel tends to be more pricey for a given performance point and to be less forgiving of errors in overclocking or voltage tweaking.  Intel's Xeon processors tend to be demonically fast, but AMD's Opteron line are just as smokin', so it's all in what you like and are willing to pay for.

I see a lot of folks here like Seagate and WD hard drives, and they're okay, I guess.  My personal favorite for drives is Hitachi Global Storage Technologies.  I've owned several Seagates, a few WDs and none of them have held up as well as the Hitachi drives I've owned and installed for others.  They are maybe a bit more expensive, but worth it.  Whatever drives you put in a system, pay attention to platter speed - faster is generally better for performance.  I like to go with nothing slower than 7200 RPM in modern systems, 10K and up when drive performance is critical (e.g., for CAD or Graphics workstations).

Drives I seem to have had my worst luck with were all made by Maxtor, but others seem to do well with them, so I don't know.  Maybe it's because a lot of what I do is very disk-intensive.

I guess that's about it for now...  good luck finding what you need.

Later On,
D

[ff103]

Thanks for a great post horusfalcon, I believed I have arrived at a decision myself and that also is to just let LinPC build me a new box. I don't believe I could buy all the parts and spend my time putting it together and getting it running for the price that Eric offers.

[T6]

time?

i normally assemble a pc in two hours, another two buying things

6 hours and i'm playing on it(testing it of course   )

[kalle123]

time?

i normally assemble a pc in two hours, another two buying things

6 hours and i'm playing on it(testing it of course   )

Normally, but if you get a buggy system, it can take week to find the reason why....

[T6]

when i have this problems(fortunately not a single one in 5 years) it takes me 2 days, i determine what is failing and then send it back for warranty

ram and mainboards is what most fails, sometimes is not a failure, incompatibilities with some ram modules still exist

when you buy hard disks, please DO NOT BUY REFURBISHED

no matter the price, warranty , it doesn't matter, don't do it, be happy

i did it once, terrible experience

[JerryP]

Normally, but if you get a buggy system, it can take week to find the reason why....

My hardware buying technique is considered "wrong" but it works for me.  I just expect the hardware will work with PCLOS.  I figure as long as I don't buy really cheap stuff (and I can assure you I am not a big spender for hardware) I find that name brands always work. The only piece of hardware I have had problems with recently was my printer which without any research I just bought. That took me a while to get to work right but in was interesting to do so that was a win-win in being interesting and being a good printer/scanner. The only piece of hardware I have sitting around is a sound card that I bought as a "super deal" (read cheap) and there were no drivers for it for Linux and I never could figure a workaround. It certainly wasn't enough to put me off from building PCs though.