need reliable motherboard with ECC support

AlpineCarver · Post by **AlpineCarver** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 12:48 am

please help me choose a motherboard for an inexpensive, linux-based file server.

most important criteria:
- well-built and reliable
- supports ECC memory
- can have at least 3 SATA devices
- supports my preferred cooling style: passive ninja on CPU, HR-05 on northbridge

INTEL vs AMD - i don't care much. i assume AMD gives more bang per buck.
FORM FACTOR - prefer micro-ATX (antec NSK-3480). can do full ATX (antec solo) if necessary.
VIDEO - just need modest on-board video. would be nice if it had both RGB and DVI outputs.
RAID - will probably use software raid under linux, so hardware raid support is not important.
OVER-CLOCKING - don't care. reliability and longevity are way higher priority than performance.
BUDGET - aiming for system cost around $400 to $500 (not including disk drives and monitor).

the motherboard that looks best to me right now is the abit AN-M2.

asus makes a few AM2/mATX/ECC boards, like the M2NPV-VM, but i've had trouble cooling them in my preferred style. i want to steer clear of asus boards, unless it can be established that a ninja + HR-05 will fit.

ck8-04 · Post by **ck8-04** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 9:12 am

AMD's AM2 processors have the memory controller integrated into the CPU, so it's not the motherboard that decides what kind of memory the system can support; it's the CPU. As far as I know, AM2 processors don't support ECC memory. Your best bet is probably an Intel processor with a 975X board for ECC memory.

edit: It looks like socket 939 does support ECC memory, but the motherboard BIOS has to support it as well. I can assume that it is the same situation with AM2. What they both don't support, however, is registered memory and support for that type of memory can only be found in the 940 processors.

sjoukew · Post by **sjoukew** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 10:31 am

The 975X is almost 2 years old now. It is used on the asus P5W DH Deluxe and similar from that series.
The boards with a W in the name are workstation boards, as is the P5W, with solid state capacitors etc. They do support ECC memory and all other requirements you do have

smilingcrow · Post by **smilingcrow** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 12:32 pm

Intelâ€™s X38 chipset supports ECC with DDR2, but not DDR3. Itâ€™s being replaced by the X48 fairly soon I think.

NyteOwl · Post by **NyteOwl** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 1:12 pm

I have always found Tyan to be extremely reliable with good longevity. Actually Tyan make lower end server board with an AM2 socket that accepts the Athlon 64/x2 and Opteron 1xxx series processors and uses ECC ram.

Broadcom chipset:

http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=217

nVidia Pro Chipset:

http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=169

Note: the Broadcom board is ECC only. The nVidia based board can use either.

truckman · Post by **truckman** » Sun Jan 27, 2008 6:01 pm

AMD AM2 processors do support ECC memory. Whether it is supported on a particular motherboard depends on whether the extra wiring tracks for the error correction bits are routed between the CPU socket and the DIMM sockets, and whether the BIOS has the code to configure ECC during POST.

ECC support on MATX motherboards is fairly rare with the AN-M2 and AN-M2HD boards being two of the few exceptions.

I've got two machines with AN-M2HD motherboards with ECC RAM. One is running Fedora 8, and the other FreeBSD 7. The former has 65W Athlon64 X2 4000+ Brisbane core CPU with a Zerotherm BTF90 HSF. The CPU runs very cool at idle, and the only time I can hear the CPU fan is when the BIOS cranks up the fan speed during POST (admittedly this machine isn't all that quiet because it has 3 hard mounted drives in a Silverstone HTPC case). The latter machine has a 65W Athlon64 X2 4800+ Brisbane core CPU with the stock AMD HSF, though I'm planning on upgrading it to use a fanless ducted HR-01.

Currently both machines are just using the stock northbridge heatsink. The northbridge does get rather warm, and even though I haven't detected any overheating problems, I'm planning on upgrading the northbridge heatsink on both to the HR-05 SLI. The reason that I chose this heatsink is that I didn't want to block either of the PCI slots.

One of the machines has three SATA hard drives and a SATA DVD-RW drive installed in it. The SATA connector shells on these motherboards are somewhat fragile, and are easy to break off when unplugging SATA cables with locking connectors.

AlpineCarver · Post by **AlpineCarver** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 12:45 am

thanks very much for the info... keep it coming!

i'm doing follow-up research based on some of your replies.

i think my top choice is still an abit micro-ATX, now the AN-M2HD version.

w.r.t. the 975X and X38 - i haven't found any boards based on these chips that have on-board video.

w.r.t. the tyan boards - the S3950 (S3950G2NR at newegg) looks like it would fit my cooling style better than the S2925, however it would add about $200 to the system price compared to the abit AN-M2HD (the MB would be $115 more, and my preferred ATX case+ps are $85 more than my preferred mATX case+ps). if i could reasonably expect an additional year or 2 of reliable operation over the abit board, the added expense and footprint might be justified.

i'd love to hear more info in the reliability and longevity of the abit AN-M2HD vs. the tyan S3950G2NR, as well as any other boards that i should be considering.

truckman · Post by **truckman** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 1:30 am

AlpineCarver wrote:i'd love to hear more info in the reliability and longevity of the abit AN-M2HD vs. the tyan S3950G2NR, as well as any other boards that i should be considering.

The AN-M2 and AN-M2HD are fairly new boards. I've got another machine that's been using the older Abit NF-M2 nView for the last year and it has been solid.

AlpineCarver · Post by **AlpineCarver** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:40 pm

i've been googling the abit and tyan boards today.

there are a lot of reviews and discussion about the abit AN-M2HD, since it's inexpensive and was designed to support home theater applications. it appears that the latest ubuntu supports it well.

i've found very little on the tyan S3950 or S3950G2NR, except for an inane video review, that gives no info beyond what you could read in the spec sheet. the components in this board have been around for a while, and it appears that there is good linux support for it as well.

the good news is that i haven't found anything very negative about either board.

i'm thinking about replacing a couple of home PCs that are getting long in the tooth. it's an attractive thought to build all 3 devices identically. if i go that direction, the mATX form factor and abit board become more attractive.

NyteOwl · Post by **NyteOwl** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 4:32 pm

I can't speak to the longevity of those particular Tyan boards, but I have three systems here at home using Tyan motherboards that are in daily use for almost all hours and have been for 8, 10, and 12 years respectively. Never a hiccup from any of them.

We have regularly used Tyan at work in both workstations and servers and none have failed during their machine's lifetime with us.

I have found msot negative reviews of Tyan are from those trying to "push" the boards (overclocking etc). They are lousy overclockers but used within specification are rock solid.

CountTyro · Post by **CountTyro** » Tue Jan 29, 2008 3:16 am

I am using ECC memory with my Asus M2a-vm. It has a bios option for enabling or disabling support.

I am having other kind of issues with my pc however, like display flicker on hibernation, failing to come out of standby sometimes, flickering pixels and such. I don't know if my monitor is faulty, but I recommend being careful.

AlpineCarver · Post by **AlpineCarver** » Wed Jan 30, 2008 2:02 pm

well, i placed an order today for an abit AN-M2. will post in the gallery after i've gotten it working.

decided to put it into a full ATX case, since newegg has the antec solo for half price at the moment. i kind of flip-flopped on the mATX vs ATX decision, because the antec solo probably will cool the second drive a little better than the antec NSK-3480.

total system cost, including BE-2350 CPU, 2 GB of Kingston DDR2-800 ECC ram, Ninja, HR-05, Seasonic S12 II 330W, etc., was $450 (system) + $500 (2 X WD GP 1TB drives) = $950.

Schlotkins · Post by **Schlotkins** » Sun Feb 03, 2008 9:16 am

I guess this may be slightly off topic at this point, but has anyone put together a board with the FB-DIMMs? I remember seeing a review that compared the Xeon/FB-DIMM solution with the Core2Duo solution but I can't find it anywhere.

I guess my question is what does FB-DIMM do on the error correction side that's better? I know they take up about 3 extra watts per DIMM and I also think there's a performance hit.

Thank you,
Chris

AlpineCarver · Post by **AlpineCarver** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 12:01 pm

here's a link to the promised gallery post: click here.

kcg · Post by **kcg** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 12:23 pm

AlpineCarver wrote:here's a link to the promised gallery post: click here.

I know this is too late, but please verify that your Abit _really_ does_ support ECC RAM. There are some experiences shown here: http://cr.yp.to/hardware/ecc.html and here: http://cr.yp.to/hardware/abit.html claiming Abit is not so good with ECC RAMs (i.e. Abit support for ECC means you can use ECC, but don't expect SECDED from them)

Cheers,
Karel