Off topic - mobo recommendations

[Bill Davidsen]

Tod Thomas wrote:
> I'm shopping for a new developer machine for which I'll be using Fedora 
> as the development platform.  Its been about about 7-8 years since I 
> built a machine from scratch but since then I've accumulated a lot of 
> parts that ultimately could contribute to a nice box if I had the right 
> motherboard.
> 
I think the cost and performance/$ have to be balanced to fit you goals and 
budget. At the moment I think the i7 Intel series, like the 920, is a good way 
to go. I've been running ASUS for years, and while I've occasionally had a BIOS 
issue on new boards, I've done that with SuperMicro as well. Some people will 
have problems with some brands, but I'm comfortable suggesting ASUS. A vendor 
such as Newegg will put you in a nice machine for about $800 for CPU, M/B, and 
12GB RAM. That's my goal for my next system, four cores, eight threads, two 
previous host machines based on those vendors, I can't justify the dual Xeon.

For real low $ operation, the old Q6600 is a good CPU, a big step up from what 
you have, or TigerDirect has AMD dual core and ASUS on sale for $200 this 
weekend (still need memory).

> I'm partial to AMD chips.  I'm not a gamer but I do like nice visuals 
> and decent sound.  I've got a good video and sound card now but they are 
> both 7-8 years old.  I suspect things have changed a lot and almost 
> wonder if newer motherboards don't offer better on board now.  I plan on 
> taking advantage of virtualization so I imagine memory and processing 
> speed would be indicated.  Over the long run I always seem to run out of 
> PCI slots or USB ports so that would be a premium.  Economy is also a 
> bonus.  I don't mind paying for performance and extensibility but if I 
> could get something pretty decent at a low cost maybe I could buy a 
> couple and replace another older board I have running.  I also like 
> BIOS's that are tweak friendly.
> 
> Right now the fastest machine in my fleet is an Intel Pentium M 1.4 GHz 
> running on a dell laptop.  My desktop (development) is running an old 
> AMD Thunderbird which I don't even think breaks 1GHz and has only .5Gb 
> of onboard memory.
> 
> Sorry for off topic, just thought this might be the best place to get an 
> idea of what everybody else is using since we all share interest in the 
> same development platform.  Flame me directly, spare the list :)
> 
I think the Intel i7 is the better choice, but it would be hard to go really 
wrong either way.

-- 
Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
   "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot