[LUAU] How long should it take to put a system together?

[Eric Hattemer]

Scott E Foulk wrote:
> I suppose I missed this part of the thread, but how does one pick a motherboard?  I have a LTSP server down, and I want to replace the MB.  I see all kinds of options and haven't a clue.  This server needs minimally 4 Gb of ram.  A decent bus speed, which CPU, etc.  Its for Linux, obviously.  
> Is there a difference in MB's that I would choose between a Linux standalone and a Windows WS?
>
>   
Sorry if this is too late to be relevant (I don't check this list
much).  If you buy the wrong motherboard, you're going to have to buy a
new one, or spend a long time making it work.  I bought an Asus A7V, and
ever since, I do a ton of research before buying a motherboard.  The A7V
had ridiculously common hard-lock issues, as described at
http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/77909585/m/9880993003/inc/1
.

So features are nice, but they aren't my main concern.  If I were to buy
a new motherboard, I would look at reviews.  I wouldn't buy anything
with less than 5 stars on newegg.  I would even go so far as to go to
their support forum and read about problems people have with the
motherboard.  If all the questions are "How do I overclock it more", or
"When I do this, and this, and that, and stand on my head, this one
function is 10% slower than I'd expect"; then it's probably a good
motherboard.  If the questions are about avoiding hardlocks and how to
get it to work with all of the RAM slots, or anything about needing a
beta version of the BIOS, run.

Anyway, as far as features go, I would look for future-proof type of
technologies.  Make sure it has firewire and USB.  Make sure that if
you're going to get a quality raid card that you have enough of that
type of slot (PCI express 16, maybe?).  Usually you can get 2 Gigabit
ports on the motherboard, but if you're buying more ethernet cards or
even >1GBit/s cards or fibre channel for storage, then you'll need
whatever port those use.  The bus speed isn't as important as allowing
DDR3 RAM and a modern processor.  DDR3 isn't important in and of itself,
but it's probably the future of RAM.  If you need at least 4GB RAM, then
you obviously need a 64-bit processor, since memory-mapped I/O will max
32-bit processors at probably 3.0-3.5GB or so.

ASUS now has a complete Linux-based diagnostic boot environment entirely
contained on a PROM on most of their server motherboards.  I've never
played with it, but it sounds neat.

I think ultimately the processor socket(s) is the limiting factor in
future-proofing.  Nowadays it's hard to upgrade one component of a
machine.  They go through RAM standards and processor sockets almost
every year now.  Intel and AMD both went a little bonkers with their
number of product lines, so you'll probably need to find some good
benchmarks (is a X3 Phenom better than a high-end opteron?  How do
core2quads compare to xeon 7 series?).

-Eric Hattemer