Motherboard advice

kernelcowboy · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 2:30 am Post subject: Motherboard advice

I have a AMD64 4800+ chip and 4 GB RAM (4 x 1gb Kingston PC3200)
and a Gigabyte GeForce FX 5200 video card
currently installed in a GA-K8NS Ultra-939 nForce3 Ultra chipset motherboard.
Running gentoo amd64.

When it comes to hardware, I know only enough to get into trouble. I want to buy
a new motherboard to use with this chip (long story), but I'm not sure what
to get. AMD's site shows 10's if not 100's of boards.

This is just a development workstation. No fancy graphics or overclocking is necessary.
Lot's of compiling! And vmware.

Can anyone recommend a good socket 939 motherboard upgrade? I want to continue running Gentoo
on it, (however I'm might go 32 bit.)

bob_111 · Apprentice Joined: 12 Oct 2004 Posts: 155

I'd reccomend anything using the NForce3 Chipset. My old S939 system had a K8N Neo2 which worked flawlessly and is still running today.

kernelcowboy · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 5:02 am Post subject:

Thanks for the reply. Out of curiosity, why not nForce4?

mudrii · l33t Joined: 26 Jun 2003 Posts: 789 Location: Singapore

I use 2X Asus A8N-SLI Premium with 2G RAM and AMD dual core 4400 for both for 2 years now and works very well and stable only one thing if you go for more that 4 DIMM as in your case the MEM timing should be set for 2T
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kernelcowboy · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 6:51 am Post subject:

Considering this Soltek board. SL-K890PRO-939

Any issues getting it going with Gentoo? LAN, SATA, etc.

Also,

kernelcowboy · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 7:07 am Post subject:

mfyahya · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Feb 2006 Posts: 110

How about getting a board supported by linuxbios

I not sure what that would mean but the lkml guys seem to think it's a good idea http://lkml.org/lkml/2007/2/21/490

kernelcowboy · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:43 am Post subject:

Thanks for that.

Looks like the ASUS A8N-E would be the board, only one that's 939,
but I can't find it in stock anywhere here in New Zealand, and I have
no idea if it's any good, anyway.

kernelcowboy · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 8:56 am Post subject:

If anyone is following this, I'll just point out that this
is probably a good place to look for compatible boards, and that Soltek I was considering
doesn't support the 4800+ chip.

depontius · Advocate Joined: 05 May 2004 Posts: 3526

kernelcowboy · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 9:38 pm Post subject:

Mad Merlin · Veteran Joined: 09 May 2005 Posts: 1155

I'm using the ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe with 2G of RAM and an X2 4200+, which is similar to the A8N-SLI Premium mentioned above, but has 32 PCIe lanes instead of 16 (both have 2 PCIe slots, afaik). My system has been rock solid since I got it about a year and a half ago.

The other advantage with both the A8N32-SLI Deluxe and the A8N-SLI Premium is that they use passive cooling (= no noisy fans that end up dying quickly) on the motherboard itself, the rest of the 939 ASUS boards use active cooling on the motherboard.
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Game! - Where the stick is mightier than the sword!

kernelcowboy · Posted: Fri Jun 01, 2007 10:54 pm Post subject:

The ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe looks execellent.
I'd take one if I could find one! (In other words, I'm still looking.)

Can anyone comment on the Jetway 939GT-SLI-G it's here
for $69.99US

kernelcowboy · Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 3:28 am Post subject:

gsoe · Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 6:37 am Post subject:

I'm afraid i don't really see what it is you expect from your new motherboard:

xmit · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 8:59 pm Post subject:

ASUS A8N does not work with some PCI cards, i.e. technotrend dvb cards.

bubbl07 · Posted: Tue Jun 12, 2007 9:56 pm Post subject:

There's also the Foxconn 6150K8MA-8EKRS (or the other one in the same family if you don't want an integrated video), which I bought for ~$60 from Newegg.

I'm using that as the motherboard in my server right now. It has S939, nForce4 chipset, integrated GeForce 6150, 4 SATA, 2x IDE ports, etc. I've been using it for almost 2 years now, overclocking my Athlon 64 and only having to restart 3-4 times (for hardware changes). Even if you don't use this, I still highly recommend an nForce4 chipset.

Also, because it's nForce4 and not nForce3, it uses a PCI Express video bus instead of AGP. I'm assuming the GeForce FX 5200 you have is AGP, so you won't be able to use it in an nForce board, but if it's just going to be used as a workstation then the integrated video may even be an upgrade. At the very worst you won't be stepping down in terms of video.

pdr · l33t Joined: 20 Mar 2004 Posts: 618

I had both my workstation and server running on the A8N-SLI Deluxe. The worstation has since switched over to core 2 duo, but the server was upgraded from an amd64 3000+ to an X2 3800+ dual core (was, and is still, using x86_64; changeover was very painless). For socket 939 I love the board, although for the server I certainly don't need SLI in it. However I did replace the chipset fan with a big passive Noctua (I think) heat sink - it was a tough fit in the workstation with a 7900GT video card, and impossible when I upgraded to an 8800GTX, which is why it is now a core 2 duo board

- but the server has a little nvidia 7200-help-i've-fallen-and-i-can't-get-up passively cooled video card and the chipset heatsink fits no problem. I've got 4 sata drives on running off the nvidia chip (the "primary" sata ports) in raid-5, and it has been flawless for, I guess, 2 years now. I will fairly often do TV show transcoding on the server, and for that the X2 3800+ in 64-bit is reasonably competitive to the 32-bit E6300 I run on the workstation (no overclocking on either one).