[OpenIndiana-discuss] General question about motherboards

[Kevin J. Woolley]

On Tuesday, 21 December, 2010 10:00, "Harry Putnam" <reader at newsguy.com> said:

> A few words from experienced people would be helpful on motherboard
> choice.
> 
> I've been running osol on this hardware:
> 
>         cpu: AMD Athlon 64, 2200 MHz (11 x 200) 3400+
> motherboard: AOpen AK86-L  (5 PCI, 1 AGP, 3 DDR DIMM
> hard drives: 2 IDE 500GB, 2 sata 500GB, 2 sata 750GB

Hi Harry,

I'm grabbing ideas from the NCIX site.  They have a US site as well, so use these links to get the SKUs and look up the SKUs on the NCIX USA site if you're in the US.

For the motherboard it sounds like this one will fit the bill, at CAD81 or so:

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=46944&vpn=M4A77TD&manufacture=ASUS

You'll need a new CPU, but that can be had for ~CAD70:

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=56116&vpn=ADX250OCGMBOX&manufacture=AMD

This RAM will give you 8GB right away at a little over CAD100 and keep two of the motherboard's four slots open to be able to upgrade to 16GB:

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=53427&vpn=CMX8GX3M2A1333C9&manufacture=Corsair

You'll likely need a new PSU, as you said.  Here's one that's not too fancy but will give you 500W for CAD46:

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=45267&vpn=AL-D500EXP&manufacture=Apex%20Computer%20Technology

The motherboard also includes six SATA2 connectors, so you have room to grow (or replace your PATA devices).

Hope that helps,

kjw