Re: Need motherboard for home fileserver

On 10/2/07, Dmitry Marakasov <amdmi3_at_amdmi3.ru> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> I need a motherboard for home fileserver with ZFS (but it'll do some
> more jobs like massive ports builds and possibly video encoding),
> but I'm really confused with which chipsets are fully supported, so I
> descided to write here.
>
> Requirements:
> - 4 SATA II channels
> - Gigabit ethernet
> - Decent sound (it'll also work as media player)
> - Dualcore CPU support
> - Onboard video (machine is planned to be headless, so I don't want to
>   bother with PCI or whatever video card)
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/platforms/amd64/motherboards.html could be
> useful, but it's outdated, so lists of:
> - working chipsets with SATA II support
> - working onboard GigE NICs
> - working onboard sound chips
>
> would be useful too.

I had similar requirements when building my latest box.  I installed
6.2 and am now running 7.0-Current on a S3000AHLX:
http://www.intel.com/design/servers/boards/s3000ah/index.htm

Built around the Intel 3000 chipset.  64-bit FreeBSD (amd64) works
fine, but I use 32-bit.

It is very stable, and a good choice for a headless machine.
- 4 SATA II channels.  Although I installed from a SATA DVD drive, it
doesn't work under 7.0-CURRENT
- 2xGigabit ethernet
- No sound, I use a USB audio card and it works great!
- Quadcore CPU support (I'm using a dualcore)
- Onboard video is kinda poor, and you can only use PCI and PCIe x1
graphics cards

I'm very happy with it, despite having to get an obscure video card to
support my monitor.  The only thing I haven't gotten working at all is
SMBUS, but I haven't tried very hard.

- Mark C.