[K12OSN] Motherboard Manufacturer Recommendations?

James P. Kinney III jkinney at localnetsolutions.com
Thu Jul 3 20:36:55 UTC 2008


The top board maker by far is Tyan. They are not the least expensive nor
the most expensive. Their boards are typically designed for heavy server
use. 

The second place in most respects is Asus. They have a larger variety of
boards than Tyan and that is tailored more toward the desktop. Many of
their models are quite solid and some are really server-duty hardware.

SuperMicro is my third choice maker. I only put it after Tyan because I
have had a SuperMicro board fail (once) and non of my Tyans have failed
(yet). As I have a strong preference for LTSP servers using AMD cpus, I
do not use many SM boards as their line is geared more toward Intel.

Last and certainly not least of what I will use is Abit. They have a
large lineup of quite stable boards that are a good value for the money.
I don't expect them to take the constant abuse of a Tyan, and they
won't. But when a working Abit board can be bought and replaced twice
for the cost of a Tyan board running the same cpu, it boils down to
allowable down time. If a failure is OK, I use Abit. If the system MUST
WORK and/or parts replacement is impossible because of remoteness, Tyan.

Right now a solid system using Athlon X2/Phenom is a very good starter
point for a new small server. Go look at the Asus Crosshair II Formula
AM@/AM2+ board :
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131292

On Thu, 2008-07-03 at 11:41 -0400, Henry Hartley wrote:
> These days we have such a huge variety of options that we really
> shouldn't complain.  In the "old days" we had to decide what speed
> Pentium we should get.  Before that, there were even fewer choices.  So,
> I want to build a small server.  It will be for testing purposes and
> will probably go to run a handful of thin clients in my home when I'm
> done.  Since I'm paying for it out of my own pocket, price matters.
> Still, I'm not completely broke yet.  So, I think I want to use a
> dual-core AMD processor but one should be adequate.  I know I want room
> for lots of RAM, although again, this won't be running 20 or 30
> stations, just three to five.  Since it's for testing, and since the
> final product WILL be a larger lab, I want to take a step into the
> 64-bit world.  That narrows things down a little but there are still a
> lot of options.
> 
> So, a very specific question.  Given the above, any motherboard
> manufacturers you would recommend, either to get or to avoid?  If you
> have a specific model you want to recommend, that would be welcome, of
> course.  The reasoning behind any of your thoughts would be most
> appreciated, too, of course.
> 
> -- 
> Henry Hartley
> 
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-- 
James P. Kinney III          
CEO & Director of Engineering 
Local Net Solutions,LLC                           
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7


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