[Asterisk-Users] Motherboard and processor recommendations

[canuck15]

This looks like blatant advertising to me.
 
The brand of motherboard is not nearly as important as the chipset used.
All motherboards use the same basic reference design and generic BIOS
firmware that is usually provided to them by the chipset manufacturer.  The
main differences now a days are the quality of components used. Some of the
cheaper name brands cut corners on the quality of capacitors and what not.
That even includes ASUS for some of their lower cost boards.  YMMV! 
 
Intel is not a chipset it is a company that makes many many many chipsets.
A newer chipset/BIOS that (properly) supports APIC is recommended by many
including Digium.  Any newer Xeon chipset is a fairly sure bet IMHO.  Higher
end newer desktop chipsets should work ok.  The much less expensive 3rd
party chipsets such as SIS seem to have a decent track record.  It depends
on your application.  
 
Cutting corners on your hardware is not a good idea if the business requires
the phones to be highly reliable.  It may work ok for awhile or it may not.
Either way it's not a good idea IMHO.  On the other hand, for my home office
I have no hesitation in using an inexpensive destop PC with newer SIS based
motherboard.  I would NEVER consider using that same PC in an office with
several incoming lines and a bunch of extensions.
 
Whatever you do, use something that is guaranteed to work.  Getting a newer
more expensive PC or server is still no guarantee.  Test and test and test
some more.  Once you are sure you have something that works well then stick
with that EXACT same configuration.  That includes BIOS revision.  Don't
assume any change will go smoothly.  Test and test and test some more before
releasing to a production environment.  This conservative approach is what
most well run IT departments follow and IP PBX applications should be
treated the same way.
 
My 2 cents.

  _____  

From: Matt Florell [mailto:astmattf at gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, September 08, 2005 7:59 AM
To: Asterisk Users Mailing List - Non-Commercial Discussion
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Motherboard and processor recommendations


We have 14 Asterisk servers with Asus/Intel in production at our four
locations. We very much recommend them and also go through zipzoomfly.com to
buy the parts.

MATT---


On 9/8/05, Martin <marrandy at chaossolutions.org> wrote: 

On Thursday 08 September 2005 08:33, Chris wrote:
>     Generally I have used Intel Chipsets on ASUS motherboards.     I've
> always used Kingston RAM.      I've used Intel P4 CPU on S478 and LGA775.
> The Asus boards almost always have NIC and sometimes on board VGA.   I've 
> not had any problems with the hardware.
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Chris

I agree.  I stick with Asus.  Try www.zipzoomfly.com  They do free 2nd day
on 
most items.  This was a recent order I had with them (check the current
prices yourselves).

80699-R         AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Processor Socket 754 Retail *** Free 2nd
Day
***      $146.00
240415  Asus K8V-X Via K8T800 Athlon 64/Sempron Skt754 DDR ATX Motherboard 
w/Audio, Gigabit LAN Retail ***Free 2nd Day***  $79.99
80098-29        Kingston KVR400X72C3A/1G 1GB DDR400 PC3200 ECC Memory Retail
***Free
2nd Day***      $112.00
101213-1        Western Digital Caviar SE WD2000JD 200GB Serial ATA 7200RPM
Hard 
Drive w/8MB Buffer *** Free 2nd Day ***         $105.00
174226  LG GSA-4163BI 16X Super-Multi Internal DVD Rewriter (Beige) Retail
***Free 2nd Day***      $60.00

NOTE: the excellent price on the 1GB Kingstone memory, with ECC (Error 
Correction), the K8V-X has settings for the ECC in bios ie. it really works.


> > 1. Would I have problems with all-onboard motherboards (Onboard VGA,
> > LAN/GLAN, Sound, SATA, RAID) ? I've read the comment about an Onboard
VGA 
> > on wiki.

What RAID ?  There are several versions.  RAID-1 mirror is on the K8V-X.

If you want RAID-5, then the Asus K8N-E DELUXE perhaps.  I don't know as I
don't have one.

> > 4. How important is the number of PCI slots? I mean, considering that 
> > I've read some comments on this list, which do not recommend more than 2
> > TDM cards on a single system (right?), 2-3 PCI slots should be enough,
is
> > this correct? (But beware this also means an all-onboard motherboard, in

> > most cases.)


That, unfortunately is a legacy intel bios (4-bit) issue.  Only 16 (0-15)
interrupts.  pci has a fix aka bodge by sharing.  One day, they will
(hopefully) move to 8-bit (or more) and we can have 255 and easily one for 
each device.

Regards...Martin
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