Essential dittos to James. My "Monorail" Tyan based PII from 1999 is still a great firewall. I have built all boxes with Tyan mobo's and AMD cpus, until recently. I like Supermicro, alot, and they provide great hardware. Just did a dual quad core 16gb ram box with SuperMicro. (it uses only 400w) For fun boxes, as James said, Abit and Asus rock. Some people give props to Gigabyte, too, but I have no experience with them. --scott <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 10:36 AM, James P. Kinney III <<a href="mailto:jkinney@localnetsolutions.com">jkinney@localnetsolutions.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> The top board maker by far is Tyan. They are not the least expensive nor the most expensive. Their boards are typically designed for heavy server use. The second place in most respects is Asus. They have a larger variety of boards than Tyan and that is tailored more toward the desktop. Many of their models are quite solid and some are really server-duty hardware. SuperMicro is my third choice maker. I only put it after Tyan because I have had a SuperMicro board fail (once) and non of my Tyans have failed (yet). As I have a strong preference for LTSP servers using AMD cpus, I do not use many SM boards as their line is geared more toward Intel. Last and certainly not least of what I will use is Abit. They have a large lineup of quite stable boards that are a good value for the money. I don't expect them to take the constant abuse of a Tyan, and they won't. But when a working Abit board can be bought and replaced twice for the cost of a Tyan board running the same cpu, it boils down to allowable down time. If a failure is OK, I use Abit. If the system MUST WORK and/or parts replacement is impossible because of remoteness, Tyan. Right now a solid system using Athlon X2/Phenom is a very good starter point for a new small server. Go look at the Asus Crosshair II Formula AM@/AM2+ board : <a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131292" target="_blank">http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131292</a> <div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c"> On Thu, 2008-07-03 at 11:41 -0400, Henry Hartley wrote: > These days we have such a huge variety of options that we really > shouldn't complain. In the "old days" we had to decide what speed > Pentium we should get. Before that, there were even fewer choices. So, > I want to build a small server. It will be for testing purposes and > will probably go to run a handful of thin clients in my home when I'm > done. Since I'm paying for it out of my own pocket, price matters. > Still, I'm not completely broke yet. So, I think I want to use a > dual-core AMD processor but one should be adequate. I know I want room > for lots of RAM, although again, this won't be running 20 or 30 > stations, just three to five. Since it's for testing, and since the > final product WILL be a larger lab, I want to take a step into the > 64-bit world. That narrows things down a little but there are still a > lot of options. > > So, a very specific question. Given the above, any motherboard > manufacturers you would recommend, either to get or to avoid? If you > have a specific model you want to recommend, that would be welcome, of > course. The reasoning behind any of your thoughts would be most > appreciated, too, of course. > > -- > Henry Hartley > > _______________________________________________ > K12OSN mailing list > <a href="mailto:K12OSN@redhat.com">K12OSN@redhat.com</a> > <a href="https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn" target="_blank">https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn</a> > For more info see <<a href="http://www.k12os.org" target="_blank">http://www.k12os.org</a>> > </div></div>-- James P. Kinney III CEO & Director of Engineering Local Net Solutions,LLC <a href="http://www.localnetsolutions.com" target="_blank">http://www.localnetsolutions.com</a> GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics) <<a href="mailto:jkinney@localnetsolutions.com">jkinney@localnetsolutions.com</a>> Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. <div><div></div><div class="Wj3C7c"> _______________________________________________ K12OSN mailing list <a href="mailto:K12OSN@redhat.com">K12OSN@redhat.com</a> <a href="https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn" target="_blank">https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn</a> For more info see <<a href="http://www.k12os.org" target="_blank">http://www.k12os.org</a>> </div></div></blockquote></div>