On Sat, 5 Jan 2013, Andrew Voumard <andrewv@melbpc.org.au> wrote:
Can anyone offer any suggestions regarding the following requirement for a new motherboard/system. It is only being used for business, and mainly for compiling/running multiple back end Java, C+++ etc applications:
1. Gaming/overclocking not a priority at all. A $20 graphic card or onboard graphics should do fine.
2. Stability & performance are most important.
You might want to check what Dell offers. The bigger PowerEdge workstations support 64G of RAM and probably get a lot more testing than any white-box motherboard that can support so much RAM.
6. Want Intel (not AMD) based, probably i7 & proably Ivy Bridge.
Why specifically Intel?
7. Either a PS/2 mouse port or 9 Serial port is essential (for the special mouse I use) - either onboard or via a PCI/e expansion board are ok.
As has already been noted a PS/2 mouse port will be a really difficult requirement. Getting a system that has a PS/2 port and supports 64G of RAM will be really difficult. Maybe one option to consider would be NVRAM devices for swap to support the large tmpfs you need. Some of the better NVRAM devices are fast enough that you probably won't notice that it's not in main memory.
10. Don't use wireless, so wifi features on the mobo are unimportant. At least 1 GBE Lan port is necessary.
Gigabit Ethernet has been standard for ages. Even my EeePC 701 has it.
Probably looking at running 64 bit Ubuntu 10.04.x (Gnome) or Kubuntu 12.04.x (KDE) as the host (to get LTS & a traditional desktop UI), with 32 bit Windows XP in a virtualbox for occasional use with basic business & legacy applications.
I haven't been following UEFI etc because for quite a while I've been getting my workstations from second-hand sales and recycling so it will be quite a while before I get hardware such secure boot support. But from what I recall Ubuntu will be using a shim boot loader to support secure boot, so this shouldn't be a problem for you. Given some of your other requirements you might want to rely on Ubuntu supporting secure boot (or using Fedora/RHEL otherwise) and concentrate on other issues. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/