Upgrade woes, storage build, need to recycle parts...

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veritas7

Gawd
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EDIT: Please follow the later posts in this thread, I keep bouncing around various topics. Oops! Sorry :|

What is in your opinion the best/most stable LGA 775 Core 2 compatible (DDR2) motherboard out there? I am planning to upgrade from a E8400 to a Q9550, and in the process, I might as well do away with my old Abit IP35 Pro as well.

I game frequently, but I don't SLI/plan to. I'd like to have at least 2x PCI-e and 1 PCI and eSATA preferably. Other onboard things are a non-issue (separate sound card, graphics).

I'm planning to migrate then this E8400/Abit pair as a storage server... which I see from posts below will do fine. I'll probably hit the software section on how to set up a server/my raid/how to access over the network.
 
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are you using DDR2 or DDR3?

As for a case, any full tower would probably be enough if you want to save $$
 
TheResidentEvil said:
are you using DDR2 or DDR3?

As for a case, any full tower would probably be enough if you want to save $$
Click to expand...

I currently am using 4x2 GB sticks of DDR2-1066 Gskill.

Sorry, didn't have the morning coffee o__o

Edit: I realized I have an old Cosmos 1000 I can put in use, doh'. Just looking for motherboard suggestions and seeing whether that E8400/IP35 would suit as a storage server or/and what software (OS - Server 2k8? Linux distros? FreeNAS?).
 
E8400? Thats overkill for a storage server. Pickup a cheap board w/ whatever interface your raid card is, pair it with a used, cheap CPU (Athlon X2, Pentium Dual Core, Celeron, etc), and you should be good to go for much less.

Software is up to you. Any distro of linux is suitable and free. ;)
 
Well, that's what I was thinking of getting some cheap board, but since I am thinking of upgrading my main rig from a P35 chipset to ______??? motherboard and a Q9550, I might as well re-use my Abit and E8400.

I should reclarify my original post to reflect that I'm looking for a new mobo.
 
P35 to P45 will do nothing for performance. E8400 to Q9550 will allow for better performance for multi-threaded apps, mainly video encoding and stuff like that.

So, what do you hope to accomplish with this upgrade, aside from the side effect of having extra parts for an overkill fileserver?
 
I'm planning to do a lot of video production and 3d graphics rendering. Since I was planning originally to upgrade to the Q9550, I thought perhaps there would be an increase in performance if I were to upgrade to the newer chipsets.

If you say even that is marginal, then what would you suggest for a cheap storage mobo to be paired with my E8400?
 
The chipset upgrade alone gives no performance improvement. The jump from dual to quadcore will definitely improve performance when rendering.

I just don't see the point of upgrading to Core2Quad if you're getting a whole new mobo and CPU. In such case, I'd suggest jumping to i7 if you have the budget, since the price of the Q9550 is comparable to the i7 920 (which is now $200 at Microcenter, btw).

So, what's your budget? If you decide to upgrade just the CPU from E8400 to Q9550, then pickup a cheap G31/G43 chipset board for your server.

If you decide to not upgrade and just need a mobo/cpu/ram for a server, then pickup an Athlon X2 4850e or 5050e for under $60 and a 740G/760G/780G chipset board for under $60.
 
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