Hi
My linux server has died and I am going to take the opportunity to upgrade some of the components.

I have a decent PSU, case, hdd, keyboard etc. but after hours of searching am completely confused as to what Motherboard to go for. I was thinking of going for a low end intel dual core cpu although I could be easily swayed (back) to AMD.

The machine will be primarily br used as a samba fileserver, (maybe webserver) and I was planning on attaching 4x500gb SATA drives (no raid) and temporarily 1 x IDE drive.

I have been using Fedora for a while but will probably give Ubuntu a try.

I am looking for a motherboard with gigabit ethernet, 4 x SATA, onboard video and ideally 1xIDE connector. I also want passive cooling on the chipset. I am looking to spend upto £200 on the motherboard, cpu and ~1gb ram. Decent linux compatibility is important.

Can anyone give me any recommendations? Thanks in advance.

Thanks

I suggest for AMD dual core processors on a Gigabyte GA-M68SM-S2. Then use ECC memory (one benefit of using AMD processors). I strongly recommend do not go with AMD's quad core because there is a chance that the TLB bug will come up.

For an Intel based system, I suggest Abit Fatal1ty F-I90HD motherboard. It uses an ATI chipset which should have least amount of problems compared to Intel 965 chipset. Rignt now, I am seeing problems on the internet from Intel's X and P chipsets too. With this board, you could go with the quad core processor.

Both motherboards uses an Realtek 8111 NIC which the kernel supports. The ATI board uses ATI graphics which might be hard to setup.

I recommend buy a new power supply that is either Seasonic or Enermax.

You do not need a fast processor. Just need fast (low access time) hard drives. Western Digital 'Raptor' hard drives have the lowest accessing times, but at cost of noise.

I suggest Gentoo and use Webmin to help you finish up the configuring.

Thanks for the advice.
I think I will be going for the following:
Gigabyte GA-M68SM-S2 nVIDIA MCP68S Micro-ATX Motherboard
Akasa AK-862 CPU Cooler
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 3600+ 2.00GHz (Socket AM2) - OEM
4 x Samsung SpinPoint T 500GB SATA-II 16MB Cache
OCZ 2GB (2x1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2
Total including VAT is £320

I looked at the ECC memory but it is pretty expensive.

I am going to use my existing case, PSU etc as there are pretty good.

Samsung sucks for hard drives. Buy either Hitachi or Western Digital.

Two 1 GB DDR2-800 ECC (Kingston KVR800D2E5K2/2G) costs $55 at newegg.com. You say this is expensive. The one you picked costs $11 more.

Thermaltake Big Typhoon is the best CPU heat sink. The retail CPU package has a better heat sink than the one you picked.

Does help a lot to use a new power supply when ever going to upgrade the motherboard. Good power supply brands that I suggest are Enermax and Seasonic.

Samsung is actually getting pretty good reviews now:
http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...px?i=3031&p=10
http://techreport.com/articles.x/10769/1
I am already using them in a couple of other machines and they are performing well.
I am in the UK so can't use Newegg however my supplier is doing the OCX ram at $42 and the cheapest ECC ram is $136! I could go somewhere else for it I suppose.
They only have the OEM 3600+ in stock at the moment so I went for the cheapest aftermarket cooler. I'll see how it goes.

I will check out the enermax.

Thanks

The Samsung T166 drives have poor accessing times. If you want to use the drives in a web server, they will slow the server down. Western Digital Raptor hard drives are better. Samsung for hard drives are unreliable. I would not put my data on those drives.

It is unfortunate that the UK does not variety and a lot of stores competing against each other like it is here in the US.

The Kingston reseller WStore in the UK sells the memory (KVR800D2E5K2/2G) for about $73 or £37.20.