What AM2+ board for server/HTPC

[dlknight]

Hi All,

I currently have a server based on a Dell T105 box with an AMD Athlon X2 4850e CPU and 4GB DDR2 1066, 3x Samsung F3 1TB in RAID 5 running Fedora 10.

I have aquired a Lian Li PC70 case which I wish to transfer my server to however I require a new motherboard, I have a new PSU (ENERMAX EG851AX-VH, 660W) that came with the case.

Currently I have a seperate HTPC running on a Asus M3N78 Pro M/B with an AMD Athlon X2 5200 and 2GB DDR2 800, 2x generic 250GB HDD's in RAID 1 runnign Fedora 11.

In the future I plan on moving the TV capture cards from the HTPC into the server, but don't want to mess about with this at the moment as it means moving the satellite and terrestrial cables.

So I'm after a board at or close to the following specs but as cheap as possible

• Support AM3 CPU's such as the AMD Athlon II X4 620
• Have at least 3 PCI slots, more if possible (4 is the highest I have seen on Gigabyte boards)
• At least 4x SATA ports, preferably 6
• Onboard graphics if possible, nothing fancy.
• 2x Gigabit LAN ports, guess that might be pushing it a little

Many thanks

 

[dlknight]

Ok perhaps my spec was a bit hard to find

I could possibly drop the onboard video, it would be nice to have dual lan and 6x SATA ports though as the server runs VM's for a firewall and a file server.

Whilst searching the MSI K9N Diamond looks good, anyone have or used one of these boards? Also some of the ASUS WS series boards...

 

[jrwagh333]

My Crosshair II formula:
AM2+ with AM3 support
6 sata ports
Onboard graphics
dual gigabit LAN
2 PCI port
3 PCIe 2.0 x16 ports
2 PCIe 2.0 x1 port

 

[wiak]

AMD 785G or 780G should work fine
i got a 690G+Athlon 64 X2 5000+ in my server and a 780G+Athlon II 250 in my htpc

why PCI?, you know you can use the PCI Express x16 slot for SATA RAID card?

 

[dlknight]

AMD 785G or 780G should work fine
i got a 690G+Athlon 64 X2 5000+ in my server and a 780G+Athlon II 250 in my htpc

why PCI?, you know you can use the PCI Express x16 slot for SATA RAID card?

I guess really there are two thoughts in my head and I'm confusing it with thinking bout upgrading my Intel gaming rig to AMD, but thats another discussion.

I would need the PCI slots for my TV capture cards, 2 at the moment but may introduce another satellite card when I upgrade my LNB.

Looking for bargain boards as well, its difficult as there are loads of boards to choose from, especially when you consider adding a cheap video card or a sata pcie card...

Cheers

Dave K.

 

[dlknight]

Well I went for a 780G board and got what I think is quite a good one?

GIGABYTE GA-MA78GPM-DS2H