From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 28 06:01:15 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 468C116A41F for ; Mon, 28 Nov 2005 06:01:15 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from nge@cs.hmc.edu) Received: from turing.cs.hmc.edu (turing.cs.hmc.edu [134.173.42.99]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 52BE243D46 for ; Mon, 28 Nov 2005 06:01:14 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from nge@cs.hmc.edu) Received: by turing.cs.hmc.edu (Postfix, from userid 26983) id EABFF53207; Sun, 27 Nov 2005 22:01:13 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by turing.cs.hmc.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id D51975A8DE; Sun, 27 Nov 2005 22:01:13 -0800 (PST) Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2005 22:01:13 -0800 (PST) From: Nate Eldredge X-X-Sender: nate@turing To: Cian Hughes In-Reply-To: <61FBEC57-424E-450F-A775-10E1F5E8DF92@cian.ws> Message-ID: References: <61FBEC57-424E-450F-A775-10E1F5E8DF92@cian.ws> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Building new Athlon AMD64 Socket 939 or 940 machine X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2005 06:01:15 -0000 On Sun, 27 Nov 2005, Cian Hughes wrote: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > Hey, I'm in no rush on this one, but I'm planning on building a new Athlon > AMD64 machine, It's primarily as a voip server and file storage box for home > use and will have 8 SATA (possibly SATA-II) drives attached to a RAID 5 card, > probably Highpoint (but i'm open on this). > > I am wondering, what have people on this list built recently, within these > bounds, I'm looking to choose a motherboard with one or two 1000Base-T > Ethernet ports (to keep PCI's free for other things, ISDN card, TV Tuner, > etc...), if possible what has and hasn't worked, i'm not too worried about > onboard HD controllers, etc. > > Basically, before I buy I want to avoid any mistakes that people have already > hit, I know there is a supported hardware list, but is their an advised > hardware list for FreeBSD, especially with regard to RAID Cards and > Motherboards. Hi Cian, I put together a machine a couple months ago. I used a Tyan S2875ANRF ("Tiger K8W") dual-Opteron motherboard and a single Opteron 244 (1.8 GHz) cpu (second one may come in the future). I am running 5.4 and have been very happy with it. I decided it was worth going for Opteron over Athlon 64. They seem to have better performance (wider memory bus, etc), obviously SMP ability, and as I understand it the regular Athlon 64s don't support ECC memory which I insist upon. The Athlon 64FX appear to be similar to the fastest Opterons and differ mainly for price marketing purposes (sold to gamers). I had a disk-related panic/crash once, I cannot remember the details. It never recurred. The board has a SiI 3114 SATA controller, and I believe support for SiI is not perfect, so that may be the cause; or the dirt-cheap disk. If you are going to use your own controller then this probably has nothing to do with you. I don't know anything about RAID hardware, sorry. It has an onboard 1000BaseT port with em controller. This works perfectly, though I only use it at 100Mb since I don't have a gigabit switch. There are 5 pci slots and 1 agp. No vga on board. I threw in an old junk pci vga card because I only use it for text (no X on the box, it's mostly headless). It also has serial ports which could be useful for headless operation. Supposedly the BIOS setup also supports a serial console. Sound, USB and Firewire are on board. I have not tried them. It doesn't support dual-core opteron, if that's something you wanted. The only other thing that didn't work immediately is the cpu temperature sensor (Winbond W83627HF). There is a hardware bit you have to twiddle to enable it, which mbmon doesn't do. I wrote my own utility to read the sensor after reading the datasheet, which of course you are welcome to if you wind up with this board. So I would recommend this board/cpu based on my experience so far. It's a good value for the money. I hope this is of some value to you. Let me know if you want to know any more. -- Nate Eldredge nge@cs.hmc.edu