Hi, 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. 3. MUST be *certain* that it is possible to disable UEFI secure boot on the mobo, to hence run any Linux distro without any secure boot hassles. 4. Want to be able to install at least 64G of RAM on the mobo, to be able to run a big ramdisk for very fast I/O when repeatedly & concurrently building (fast rebuild times) & testing database intensive applications - all on ramdisk. 5. 4 core CPU would be ideal (singlethreaded performance is important, so don't want to spread CPU grunt across too many cores, but a degree of application concurrency is important too for concurrent building/running applications in the background). 6. Want Intel (not AMD) based, probably i7 & proably Ivy Bridge. 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. 8. Boot drive will be an SSD (probably 256G Crucial m4 or Samsung 840 Pro), backup drive probably a 1TB non raided WD RE4. 9. Want a fast CPU, but not willing to pay sqillions for the absolute fastest - maybe an i7-3770K ? 10. Don't use wireless, so wifi features on the mobo are unimportant. At least 1 GBE Lan port is necessary. Cost is not the main criteria .. but I don't want to waste it either. A budget of 1500 would be good if it could get me what I want but can spend more if need be. 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 have seen various comments on chipsets (Q77, H77, Z77 in particular), but am not a great deal the wiser as a result :) Prefer mainsteam mobo manufacturer (Asus, Gigabyte, MSI etc) for (usually better) firmware upgrade support. Many Thanks for any suggestions, Andrew

Any z77 motherboard is going to fit all of those requirements with just two outliers - the memory (many will have a maximum of 32GB) and the ps2 mouse port/serial port. I can absolutely guarantee you that any modern motherboard will be without a ps/2 port, the serial port I'm less sure about. I would suggest looking for an add-on card you can use as it will make searching simpler. Sorry I can't make a recommendation on a board as I've never had to use that much memory, but given that is your only special requirement, it should make narrowing the choice down much easier. If you have a preferred retailer you could try looking through the z77motherboards in their pricing list for one that handles 64GB+ (or if its one of those older-style stores that actually offers decent service, phone them and ask - nostalgic!).

Given the above, a remote desktop setup may be an option to consider to work around your mouse requirements, although this add hardware to the setup. Daniel

Hi Russell, At 12:22 PM 5/01/2013, Russell Coker wrote: Ok, will look at them. Previously had heat & driver issues with AMD (can't recall which chipset that was now), while I am sure many folks are happy with them, I am happy with all the Intel based boards I've used and haven't had similar issues with them. I am thinking NVRAM performance would be slower (to some degree) than main memory, and I expect the hardware is less mainstream & hence more expensive ? My only concern is if I want to write/load any custom drivers, that I don't want to be spending time sorting out any driver signing hassles, & it also gives me the freedom to run a non signed distro if I find the need - I like choice to be completely in my hands if I spent the money on the hardware :) I am expecting most mobo suppliers will provide such an option (for x86, they _have_ to, to comply with putting a Win8 sticker on their hardware), but it's awlays easier getting confirmation of that before, rather than after purchase :) Thanks Andrew

What about a server like a HP ML350 G6? Fits all your requirements including ps2 and serial ports. Only downside could be cost of memory. They run quite quietly for servers. Just a thought. Andy Sent from my Android On 5 Jan 2013 04:07, "Russell Coker" <russell(a)coker.com.au> wrote:

They tend to be a bit noisy on startup though. A few of our customers have been quite alarmed when they've heard them :) When cost cutting has been required, we have sometimes used Kingston branded memory for HP servers and have never had a problem with it, and it's often less than half the price. With a brand new system you'd need to be aware that for a warranty call HP may require you to reproduce a problem with the non-HP parts removed, but that rarely comes up. Also, you can get empty SAS/SATA disk caddies and buy your own disks and save quite a bit that way too, although I wouldn't recommend it for the higher end HP RAID controllers like you'd find in the ML 350 servers. I've only done it with the low end servers where I use Linux software RAID (and bcache). James

On Mon, 7 Jan 2013, "Trent W. Buck" <trentbuck(a)gmail.com> wrote: I've just done some tests. My EeePC supports negotiating crossover (so you can use the same cable to connect to a switch or another PC), I previously had the impression that only GigE systems had that feature - which for my personal use is the main benefit of GigE. But it seems that my EeePC has it without support for speeds over 100baseT. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

If the following article is to be believed (it isn't very credible IMHO), netbooks apparently aren't being produced any more. http://www.theage.com.au/digital-life/computers/how-apple-nixed-the-netbook… -- Brian May <brian(a)microcomaustralia.com.au>1

I was looking at ssds for my laptop around the middle of last year. My choices were restricted to Intel, Samsung or crucial due to a slim bay. I ended up picking the Intel, but here's a summary of what I found: Intel: good but expensive Samsung: good apart from the massive power consumption (many saw it use twice as much power as other ssds) Crucial: avoid. Very unreliable, some even had them fail, got them replaced and failed again in the same year. Bianca On 8 Jan 2013 23:56, "Russell Coker" <russell(a)coker.com.au> wrote:

On 7/01/2013 4:00 PM, Trent W. Buck wrote: I think it's been a very long time since we've had to use crossover cables for any connections as we've had Auto-MDIX being standard on lots of equipment (switches / routers) for yonks. Cheers A.

On Sat, Jan 05, 2013 at 09:22:10AM +1100, Andrew Voumard wrote: AFAIK, if you want 64GB then you need an X79 motherboard (all Z77 motherboards I've found only have 4 DIMM sockets, and support a maximum of 32GB). e.g. Asus P9X79 LE ($217) or P9X79 PRO ($319) or Sabertooth-X79 ($348) they all have 8 DIMM sockets and one serial port. amazingly, they all also have a ps/2 port. http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_2011/P9X79_LE/#specifications http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_2011/P9X79_PRO/#specifications http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_2011/SABERTOOTH_X79/#specific… i quite like the Sabertooth series boards - i've got a couple of AMD CPU Sabertooth 990FX boards here, high quality boards aimed at professionals rather than gamers (as their Rampage boards are) yeah, don't underestimate the usefulness of 'make -j' - multicore compile is really worthwhile. and multi-core CPUs won't sacrifice the speed of single cores (Speeds start from around 3.2Ghz these days and both amd and intel have similar-but-differently-trademarked features which will boost the speed of one core if the others are idle). X79 is for the LGA2011 socket, so your CPU choices would be Core i7-3820 ($295), i7-3930K ($579), or i7-3930X ($1076). the i7-3820 seems to best match your criteria, 4 cores at 3.6GHz (and TurboBoost to 3.8GHz) The 3930K is 6-core @ 3.2GHz (Turbo-Boost to 3.8GHz) The OCZ Vector is getting excellent reviews too. $289 for 256GB. I would recommend two drives in RAID-1 (or btrfs for snapshot capability) for your backup/bulk-storage drive. some rough figures for you to play around with: Sabertooth X79 $348 i7-3820 $295 SSD $300-ish 2 x WD RE4 $248 case, psu $200-ish or more, a good PSU is essential 4 x 16GB kits @ $80 = $320 2x8G sticks each, DDR3-1600 (faster would be more expensive) GT210 video card $26 ----- $1737 ----- It'd be hard to shave off much from that...a cheaper SSD maybe, and the extra WD RE4 adds $124. if you prefer Radeon GPUs (better GPL drivers than nvidia but worse proprietary drivers), a Radeon 5450 is $1 more. (i tend to put stuff like this in a spreadsheet with various options for m/b and cpu and play with it until i get the best bang for the buck...and then have a shopping list for MSY or whoever) if you can live with 32GB RAM then you could do it for under $1600 with the same CPU & M/B as above with only 32GB (but room to add another 32GB later) or with a Z77 motherboard and LGA1155 CPU for around $1500. craig -- craig sanders <cas(a)taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #404: Sysadmin accidentally destroyed pager with a large hammer.

On Mon, Jan 07, 2013 at 11:25:47AM +1100, Trent W. Buck wrote: yep, 'make -j N' where N ~= the number of cpus/cores you want to use. other useful tools to make full use of multi-core systems include the -P or --max-procs option of xargs: --max-procs=max-procs -P max-procs Run up to max-procs processes at a time; the default is 1. If max-procs is 0, xargs will run as many processes as possible at a time. Use the -n option with -P; otherwise chances are that only one exec will be done. depending on exactly what you're trying to do, this can result in enormous speedups of 'find ... | xargs ...' and imilar common idioms. and, of course, there is GNU parallel which can be used as a substitute for xargs (the command line options are deliberately the same), or even as a #!/usr/bin/parallel script. craig -- craig sanders <cas(a)taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #267: The UPS is on strike.

Craig Sanders &lt;cas(a)taz.net.au&gt; wrote: I recently did this with -j4 (on my machine with 4 CPU cores) to compile Chromium sources - for purposes related to their accessibility support. Two worrying observations: 1. Temperature sensors in the machine were disturbingly high, upward of 83. 2. There was unusual, intermittent noise (presumably fan noise). I hit ctrl-c at that point and tried again with -j1, which took most of the day to complete... We do have evaporation cooling around here which should help somewhat with the room temperature. I could try 2 or 3, of course. Current temperatures on this machine (with a 0.19 load average): coretemp-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Core 0: +50.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 1: +50.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) coretemp-isa-0003 Adapter: ISA adapter Core 0: +56.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) Core 1: +56.0°C (high = +86.0°C, crit = +100.0°C) i5k_amb-isa-0000 Adapter: ISA adapter Ch. 0 DIMM 0: +58.0°C (low = +127.5°C, high = +127.5°C) Ch. 1 DIMM 0: +122.0°C (low = +127.5°C, high = +127.5°C) Ch. 2 DIMM 0: +127.0°C (low = +127.5°C, high = +127.5°C) Ch. 3 DIMM 0: +91.0°C (low = +127.5°C, high = +127.5°C) nouveau-pci-4000 Adapter: PCI adapter temp1: +78.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +120.0°C) Of course, the drives are getting old now, so I suppose we're into high risk territory (I have backup of everything that matters). What would you suggest as best preparation for heavy compilation tasks? Is there anything on here I should check out regarding the hardware, or preemptively replace/upgrade? Here's smartctl -a for both drives: smartctl 5.43 2012-06-05 r3561 [x86_64-linux-3.2.0-4-amd64] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Vendor: SEAGATE Product: ST373454SS Revision: HPS3 User Capacity: 73,407,865,856 bytes [73.4 GB] Logical block size: 512 bytes Logical Unit id: 0x5000c5000043ef13 Serial number: 3KP2RC6B00007641E2MM Device type: disk Transport protocol: SAS Local Time is: Tue Jan 8 12:09:18 2013 EST Device supports SMART and is Enabled Temperature Warning Enabled SMART Health Status: OK Current Drive Temperature: 48 C Drive Trip Temperature: 65 C Elements in grown defect list: 0 Vendor (Seagate) cache information Blocks sent to initiator = 3918518339 Blocks received from initiator = 161292342 Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 1034486167 Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 360848807 Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 1372 Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information number of hours powered up = 24869.65 number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 78 Error counter log: Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors read: 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 write: 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 Non-medium error count: 21 No self-tests have been logged Long (extended) Self Test duration: 1064 seconds [17.7 minutes] smartctl 5.43 2012-06-05 r3561 [x86_64-linux-3.2.0-4-amd64] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-12 by Bruce Allen, http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net Vendor: SEAGATE Product: ST373454SS Revision: HPS3 User Capacity: 73,407,865,856 bytes [73.4 GB] Logical block size: 512 bytes Logical Unit id: 0x5000c50000474187 Serial number: 3KP3FAA600007645PUBM Device type: disk Transport protocol: SAS Local Time is: Tue Jan 8 12:09:54 2013 EST Device supports SMART and is Enabled Temperature Warning Enabled SMART Health Status: OK Current Drive Temperature: 46 C Drive Trip Temperature: 65 C Elements in grown defect list: 0 Vendor (Seagate) cache information Blocks sent to initiator = 3758196373 Blocks received from initiator = 245812821 Blocks read from cache and sent to initiator = 1051276525 Number of read and write commands whose size <= segment size = 340335533 Number of read and write commands whose size > segment size = 7 Vendor (Seagate/Hitachi) factory information number of hours powered up = 26430.55 number of minutes until next internal SMART test = 76 Error counter log: Errors Corrected by Total Correction Gigabytes Total ECC rereads/ errors algorithm processed uncorrected fast | delayed rewrites corrected invocations [10^9 bytes] errors read: 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 write: 0 0 0 0 0 0.000 0 Non-medium error count: 8 No self-tests have been logged Long (extended) Self Test duration: 1064 seconds [17.7 minutes]

Jason White &lt;jason(a)jasonjgw.net&gt; writes: This is wrong. The most useful thing SMART can do is tell the drives to run a self test and tell you what the result was. IIRC, smartctl /dev/sda -d sat -t short smartctl /dev/sda -d sat -l selftest If it passes short and long tests it's probably OK. If it fails a short test you should think about replacing it. I also heartily second Russell's suggestion, viz. do compiles on rack-mounted servers, not laptops.

Jason White wrote: and here was me thinking the really hairy-chested thing was to cross-compile it on one's Android phone !O:-) regards Rohan McLeod

On 6/01/2013 9:59 AM, Craig Sanders wrote: I've heard that OCZ should be avoided, wish I had a better reference, but the guy (tech guy at Centrecom) said go with Intel ... I mentioned Samsung, he said, yes, either of those two, but NOT OCZ. In fact he told my friend that OCZ was so bad that he would de-friend him if he chose one. The main two main reasons were that OCZ had too many returns and that OCZ is like a marketing brand which just puts together parts from other manufacturers .... which I add is a bit like like Belkin whom don't build anything themselves, but rather find products and have them branded as Belkin to sell. Me, myself, well I don't know, but nobody got fired choosing <s>IBM</s> Intel...... just sayin' Otherwise I think your response was fantastic Craig. Cheers A.

On Mon, Jan 07, 2013 at 01:46:13PM +1100, Andrew McGlashan wrote: apparently the first few OCZ models were crap, but then so were the first few models of most other brands....lack of TRIM support, firmware bugs. from what i've read this hasn't been a problem in recent years, including the OCZ Vertex 3 and the OCZ Vector model I mentioned. I certainly hope so, I just bought a 256GB OCZ Vector to replace the 128GB Patriot Torqx in my main machine (haven't got around to it yet, have been stufffing around with my new asus notebook instead) craig -- craig sanders &lt;cas(a)taz.net.au&gt;