Which AM2 motherboard

[time]

I'm out of touch with this sort of thing: which AM2 motherboard do you guys recommend?

Fan-cooled chipsets are out of the question; more than one PCI slot would be nice; I'd like the Gbe interface to be half decent if possible.

Oh yeah, reliability is more important than anything else ...

 

[Bozo]

Oh yeah, reliability is more important than anything else ...

Then use an Intel motherboard [made by Inel] and CPU.


Bozo :joker:

 

[Mercutio]

Almost everything I've built on AM2, I've used a GA-M61PM-S2 ("S2").

Gigabyte has "S3" and "S4" products but I haven't tried any yet.
Its S3 Intel boards are very nice though.

 

[CougTek]

Don't use the Asus AM2 boards. Their Cool N'Quiet implementation is broken and you'll have stability problem if you enable it. I'm an unfortunate M2NPV-VM owner. The board is stable with CNQ disabled though.

 

[ddrueding]

I'm looking for a new AM2 board as well. Gigabyte only; based on Merc (and Tannin?)'s recommendations years ago and a flawless track record since. I currently have a GIGABYTE GA-M51GM-S2G but I need something with more slots. SLI-ing some 7950s sounds like fun, and I need to put a TV-tuner card next to my Auzentech Soundcard. The nForce 590-based board is super-expensive, is there a reason I should be looking at it?

 

[Handruin]

I'm using the Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 AM2 MB. It is completely fan-less (uses heat pipes) and has two PCI, two 16x PCIe, three 1x PCIe. I'm genuinely happy with it. There are a few occasions where I lose power and the bios wants to correct itself to a failsafe and I have to take a sec and make sure I pick the correct on or it will reset everything to the defaults (which is a pain because of my custom RAM timings).

I have no real argument to say this board is better than the S2 or S3, I made my choice based on reviews and also 6 SATA.

My system's specs are in my profile if you want to see what else I have with this board. Overall if I were building another system like mine, I would buy this board again.

 

[ddrueding]

Good to know you are having good experiences Handy, but I think I'll be going for the 590-based board anyway, just so I can have more space between the second PCIe x16 and the PCI slots.

 

[Handruin]

When I looked into the 590's, I couldn't find a compelling reason to pay the extra money. The 570 had more than I needed with some room to grow (meaning extra pcie, extra sata, and 4 dimms. I guess in your case that makes sense, but how much larger is it over the one I bought?

Also, my board has been extremely stable while running F@H 24x7 with the stock HSF on the 4600+.

 

[ddrueding]

For me it's tricky. I've gotten myself down to one PC; from 4 primary machines (gaming, silent office, file/print/VM server, HTPC). Because of this, I need to do a lot of stuff. Here is what I plan on sticking in it:

Modified P180 (ducted, multi-chamber airflow)
Antec NeoHE 480W (might need bigger?)
4x Scythe S-Flex FDB 120mm fans @ 800RPM (nearly silent)
3x 750GB Seagate SATA (JBOD - backup on another machine)
1x 74GB Raptor SATA (Dual-boot Server 2003 Standard R2 and Vista Ultimate)
1x 2GB Sandisk Ultra II on CF-IDE adapter (for Vista caching goodness)
3x Samsung DVD-RW drives (identical, for ripping stuff)
4x 1GB DDR2-800 (2GB DIMMs are still too pricey)
AMD X2 5400+ (2.8Ghz)
XFX 7950GT Fanless (driving 2 Viewsonic VP2130b LCDs)
XFX 7600GS Fanless (driving Samsung 191T LCD and Sharp XR-20X projector)
Auzentech X-Plosion 7.1 Soundcard (SPDIF out to receiver - thanks Merc)
MyHD PCI HDTV Tuner/Decoder MDP-130 (looks decent, haven't tried it yet)

I'd like to have the extra space between the 7600GS (middle PCIe) and the soundcard (top PCI) to work some of my ducted goodness

 

[LunarMist]

The Ultra II is rather slow. Consider the Extreme III (2x faster) or Extreme IV (4x faster). I'm not sure how well the adapters perform however.

 

[ddrueding]

It makes sense that the Extreme IV is 4x faster, as it costs nearly 3x as much...(40MB/sec sustained...holy crap!)

Fortunately the Extreme III is only 50% more. I'll look into it. Whenever I have tried to enable ReadyBoost on anything, it says that the media isn't fast enough. I wonder how fast they are looking for.

 

[LunarMist]

ReadyBoost? What is that, an ED treatment?

 

[ddrueding]

From what I can tell, it caches certain things that benefit from the super-low access time (small files). Another tech (SuperFetch) caches entire apps (where STR is a factor) into any available RAM.

 

[fb]

I don't know if you've seen this, but Sandisk has just lowered their prices on flash and I've seen the effect in one online store here in Sweden. The Extreme IV only costs a little bit more than the Extreme III used to last week.

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=37719

 

[LunarMist]

Flash memory prices are falling rapidly.

http://www.sandisk.com/Corporate/PressRoom/PressReleases/PressRelease.aspx?ID=3723

 

[ddrueding]

So how long before we get an iRAM that uses 4-8 CF cards? That would be sexy...

 

[Handruin]

Looks like people are falling along with the prices...In that article, sandisk is saying:

• A worldwide reduction in our employee workforce of up to 10% of headcount, or approximately 250 employees. These cuts will primarily occur in early March and impact all areas and will reflect, in part, the decision we recently made to de-emphasize the USB private label business in favor of the more profitable SanDisk branded business.
• A reduction in salaries for all executives. This will include a 20% cut in base pay for the CEO, 15% for the President and EVPs, and 10% for other VPs.
• A freeze in salaries for all other employees.
• A freeze in new hire staffing levels for most areas, although the company will continue to hire in strategic areas including product innovation and future generation technologies, such as x4 and 3D.

 

[LunarMist]

Whatever happe