TreeTopFlyer
join:2001-12-14
Houston, TX
| Best MB for LGA775 Core2Quad Q9550
I've got a couple Q9550 Quad cores laying around and wondered what y'all think the best mb would be to put them in. Quality is the main concern. MB's need to support RAID 5 (at least 6 SATA ports). I'm looking at some Gigabyte models but open to other brands. One will be used as a workstation and the other as a server for my home network. I want both mb's to be same model for ease of maintaining. A plus would be the ability to use DDR2-800 memory since I've got a stack of them laying around also. |
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koitsu
Premium
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
1 edit | I don't think there's such a thing as a "best motherboard".
For my workstation, I have a Q9550 running in an Asus P5Q SE board that runs without any problems. For my home server, I have an E8400 running in a Supermicro X7SBA board (using the on-board Intel ICH9, under FreeBSD with ZFS. I do not use BIOS-level RAID). The server board has 6 SATA ports, and I use 3 of those.
I doubt you're going to find a consumer motherboard that offers RAID 5 via BIOS-level RAID. Boards with JMicron controllers might offer this, but there are tons of reasons to stay away from JMicron controllers and stick purely with the Intel ICH. Additionally, you're not going to find a consumer board that has more than 6 SATA ports; most have 4 or 6 at this point.
Do both your workstation and server systems require RAID-5? If just the server: it depends on what OS you're going to use. FreeBSD and Linux both offer OS-level RAID-5 or RAID-5-like equivalents (ZFS on FreeBSD, LVM on Linux).
Otherwise, my recommendation would be to invest in an 8/12/16-port SATA RAID card that's PCIe and does RAID-5 and works in the OS you're going to use. Worthwhile brands include Areca, Highpoint, and Promise. I highly recommend Areca.
Most of these cards are PCIe x4 or x8, which means you'll need to a motherboard that offers that connector. You cannot use your PCI Express x16 video card slot (motherboard manufacturers intend those slots to be used by video cards, and chances are the system won't POST if you try otherwise. Sad but true).
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. |
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Somnambul33t
L33t.
Premium
join:2002-12-05
Mullica Hill, NJ
clubs:
 ·Comcast
| reply to TreeTopFlyer
most motherboards will be fine if they use a quality chipset. however, i only purchase Asus and Gigabyte with almost no exceptions. this isnt to say other brands arent quality, but ive had a perfect track record over dozens of PCs with these 2 brands, and less than perfect with other brands. plus, i can easily tell the quality of a gigabyte model based on the trailing #- 3, 4, 5, 6...the higher the number, the 'better' the mobo. and asus uses bar none the best PWMs and caps across all their lines of all the brands (save MAYBE DFI, which doesnt really produce many boards these days)
I have a Maximus Formula for my Q6700, running 3.6ghz steady for well over a year. the PWMs are solid...it handles the 100+amps of this quad with ease.
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Somnambulator - t3h 5133pw41k3r
~Choosy moms choose Jif~ |
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kvn864
join:2001-12-18
Simpsonville, SC
·Charter Pipeline
| reply to TreeTopFlyer
Stay away from Abit boards with this chip, they out of operations. E0 Q9550 won't work with most of them, and those boards can still be around. I have E0 9550 and Abit IP35 Pro (great board) and those two don't work together. Just a heads up. And I'd agree with Asus, Gigabyte choices. Good luck. |
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TreeTopFlyer
join:2001-12-14
Houston, TX
| reply to koitsu
said by koitsu  :I don't think there's such a thing as a "best motherboard". Yeah, I guess I should have been a little clearer by saying "reliable/no problems" which you answered in your next line. These 2 systems are gonna replace 2 Gigabyte 680SLI mb's w/core2Duo CPU's. The 680SLI does have RAID5 at the BIOS level which is fine for my home needs. I do have an Areca PCI-E raid card I might throw in the server but it's probably overkill for my home needs. The ws will be running Vista Ultimate and the server will be running MS2k3 standard. No OC'ing on either system. |
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mattrixx
join:2004-02-18
Orland Park, IL
| reply to kvn864
said by kvn864 :Stay away from Abit boards with this chip, they out of operations. E0 Q9550 won't work with most of them, and those boards can still be around. I have E0 9550 and Abit IP35 Pro (great board) and those two don't work together. Just a heads up. And I'd agree with Asus, Gigabyte choices. Good luck. Just curious, why wont Abit IP35 and Q9550 "work together"?
I have this MB and was thinking of replacing my dual core E6750 with the quad core 9550.
The only restriction for me (according to Abit site) would be a newer/later BIOS revision, as the Q9550 *IS* supported! |
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koitsu
Premium
join:2002-07-16
Mountain View, CA
| I'd like to know this as well. I went looking on Abit's site, but apparently their Oracle SQL server is broken:
Never ceases to amaze me how often these motherboard vendors' websites are down. Supermicro, as a comparative example, has had packet loss of up to 40% starting at the border of their network (router) for about 4 months.
Making hardware? Good. Maintaining software properly? Not so good.
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Making life hard for others since 1977.
I speak for myself and not my employer/affiliates of my employer. |
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kvn864
join:2001-12-18
Simpsonville, SC
·Charter Pipeline
| reply to mattrixx
Do you have IP35 or IP35 Pro? E0 Q9550 and Abit IP35 Pro don't work together. What I can see you have around 25% of success. Abit site says BIOS 17 supports it, it doesn't, not E0 stepping. There is BIOS 18 Beta floating around that works for some people with E0. I wasn't one of them, and I saw lots of others. The advice was: get the board of maker thats still around. Decide for yourself. |
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mattrixx
join:2004-02-18
Orland Park, IL
| I have an Abit IP35 PRO.
E6750 stepping as shown
Where are you coming up with that "around 25% of success"? |
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kvn864
join:2001-12-18
Simpsonville, SC
·Charter Pipeline
| Here is a guy with your scenario
»www.clunk.org.uk/forums/general-···7-a.html
also look through this
»www.google.com/search?hl=en&sour···e+Search
I've read tons of forums online, wanted to get mine to work.... |
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