# motherboards that work well with gentoo ?

## cwc

My last post was in reference to my ASUS A8V-VM Motherboard and it only seeing 3 gigs of RAM.

Some said I should drive over it. Well,  I'd like to keep it and get a new Motherboard preferably AMD because of cost.

I'd also like to stick with Nvidia unless I could be convinced ATI would be an advantage.

I'm a Java, PHP, and Arduino programmer.

I also want to run Blender.

The ASUS A8V-VM worked well with Gentoo.  

What Motherboards are ya all using and what could you recommend. <$200

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## Clad in Sky

Should probably moved to kernel and hardware for better results.

5 years ago I built my computer with a Gigabyte board and haven't had any problems so far. I'm too lazy to search for the specifications since the board is so old. At the same time I also built one computer with an Asrock board, and a friend has one box with the same board and both worked and still do without problems.

I'd stick to NVidia for the time being because Nvidia works well here.

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## energyman76b

Gigabyte

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## pjp

I bought a pair of MSI boards and was disappointed. One had a faulty memory channel, but it was a long time before I got around to troubleshooting the problem.

I replaced it and another older system with identical Gigabyte boards (AMD). I've been happy.

Unless I had a reason to do otherwise, I'd probably go with Gigabyte again.

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## John R. Graham

 *Clad in Sky wrote:*   

> Should probably moved to kernel and hardware for better results.

 Agreed. Moved as suggested.

- John

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## NeddySeagoon

cwc,

That sounds very 32 bitish.  Is it a BIOS problem?

Regardless of what the BIOS might report, what does a 64 bit liveCD have to say about RAM ?

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## John R. Graham

I have had really good luck with Supermicro, but they're pricey. I love their dual Xeon server boards, from which I build workstation-class machines.

However, I'm not sure the premise is especially valid these days. Which one of you have had bad luck getting Gentoo running on any mainstream motherboard? Even pjp's issues are ones of quality, not of compatibility.

- John

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## cwc

 *NeddySeagoon wrote:*   

> cwc,
> 
> That sounds very 32 bitish.  Is it a BIOS problem?
> 
> Regardless of what the BIOS might report, what does a 64 bit liveCD have to say about RAM ?

 

Hmmm. . .  Good idea!

I'll give that a try after Chromium installs  :Smile:   A few hours from now.

Rescue CD 64 bit results

root@sysresccd /root % free -m

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached

Mem:          3237        407       2829          0         34        197

-/+ buffers/cache:        175       3061

Swap:            0          0          0

root@sysresccd /root % top

top - 07:05:45 up 44 min,  0 users,  load average: 0.06, 0.04, 0.05

Tasks:  86 total,   1 running,  85 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie

Cpu(s):  0.3%us,  0.3%sy,  0.0%ni, 99.3%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st

Mem:   3314812k total,   416456k used,  2898356k free,    35548k buffers

Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,   201556k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND            

 1904 root      20   0  2460 1044  804 R  0.7  0.0   0:03.54 top                

 1826 root      19  -1 40436  14m 5024 S  0.3  0.4   0:10.06 X                  

 1875 root      20   0 26920  10m 7540 S  0.3  0.3   0:04.73 terminal           

 1899 root      20   0  142m  39m  18m S  0.3  1.2   0:07.33 midori             

    1 root      20   0  1736  592  520 S  0.0  0.0   0:02.03 init               

    2 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd           

    3 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.09 ksoftirqd/0        

    4 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.11 kworker/0:0        

    5 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/u:0        

    6 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 migration/0        

    7 root      RT   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 watchdog/0         

    8 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 cpuset             

    9 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 khelper            

   10 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 netns              

   11 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 sync_supers        

   12 root      20   0     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 bdi-default        

   13 root       0 -20     0    0    0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kintegrityd

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## AaronPPC

I just built a new rig on an Asus M5A99X Evo R2.0 motherboard.  I believe it will meet all of your criteria.  It is an AMD AM3+ board with an nVidia 990 chipset and is $140 at Newegg.  It works perfectly under Linux.  Suspend and hibernate even works!

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## Ant P.

My 2¢, hardware I can recall using recently:

Gigabyte (AM2/3) - works well enough, got a free CPU core from a BIOS update, can't complain

Asus (various ICH-based) - works OK now, had various graphics/wifi problems when I first bought them.

Jetway (ICH) - avoid like plague. Buggy BIOS, no manufacturer-provided updates for it either. Hardware sensors were useless because of broken ACPI.

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## cwc

I found this expensive MSI board at New Egg.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130677

Military Grade?

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## Anon-E-moose

Most boards will run linux (some with various degrees of success).

But to be sure, read the specs on the board and check gentoo search for problems with onboard stuff

especially the video (if onboard), usb controllers, full iommu support (if doing virtualization) and ethernet.

I own an older MSI board that still runs fine except it doesn't support iommu completely, 

so I've upgraded to an Asus m5a99fx. I initially upgraded to an asrock but it shorted out

for some strange reason and they had no more to swap out, so I went with the Asus.

Gigabyte is swapout compatible with many MSI and Asus boards as they seem to use the same reference designs, IMO.

Good luck

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## tomtom69

I can also recommend asrock.

Old board was a K7S41GX (~9 years old, 2 systems still running), and currently I am running a N68C-S-UCC (~3 years old) on 3 systems without any problems. Both with AMD.

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## krinn

 *cwc wrote:*   

> My last post was in reference to my ASUS A8V-VM Motherboard and it only seeing 3 gigs of RAM.

 

Well, if you have 3g install, what's wrong ?

But if you have more than 3g ram, then this looks a bit strange  :Smile: 

 *Quote:*   

> The ASUS A8V-VM worked well with Gentoo.  

 

You should define what a "motherboards that work well with gentoo ?" is for you

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## Anon-E-moose

 *cwc wrote:*   

> My last post was in reference to my ASUS A8V-VM Motherboard and it only seeing 3 gigs of RAM.

 

The max that motherboard holds is 4 gig, which is 4 1 gig sticks. 

Anything larger than a 1 gig stick likely won't be recognized (by system/bios).

And what do you mean by "not recognized"? 

Are you referring to the operating system, or the board itself?

X86 mode will only see ~3.7 gig.

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## krinn

Also most VM boards include onchip video, and because of that, an amount of system memory is reserved (read eaten) for the video. So there's no way to have 100% memory for your own usage.

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## cwc

 *Anon-E-moose wrote:*   

>  *cwc wrote:*   My last post was in reference to my ASUS A8V-VM Motherboard and it only seeing 3 gigs of RAM. 
> 
> The max that motherboard holds is 4 gig, which is 4 1 gig sticks. 
> 
> Anything larger than a 1 gig stick likely won't be recognized (by system/bios).
> ...

 

```

azzerare ~ # uname -a

Linux azzerare 3.7.10-gentoo #1 SMP Sun Mar 17 22:09:45 PDT 2013 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3400+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

azzerare ~ # free -m

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached

Mem:          3233       2654        578          0        437       1044

-/+ buffers/cache:       1171       2061

Swap:         8192          2       8189

```

This board does have an on board video.

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## Anon-E-moose

 *Quote:*   

> 3233

 

That's 3.2 Gig. 

That's total memory available, not including what the kernel takes or any set aside for other uses.

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## bammbamm808

 *AaronPPC wrote:*   

> I just built a new rig on an Asus M5A99X Evo R2.0 motherboard.  I believe it will meet all of your criteria.  It is an AMD AM3+ board with an nVidia 990 chipset and is $140 at Newegg.  It works perfectly under Linux.  Suspend and hibernate even works!

 

Same board here. Great build and my quadcore really helps with emerges. Make sure your power supply is both high quality and has ample rated wattage. I would avoid MSI motherboards. I haven't had much luck with them.

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## cwc

 *bammbamm808 wrote:*   

>  *AaronPPC wrote:*   I just built a new rig on an Asus M5A99X Evo R2.0 motherboard.  I believe it will meet all of your criteria.  It is an AMD AM3+ board with an nVidia 990 chipset and is $140 at Newegg.  It works perfectly under Linux.  Suspend and hibernate even works! 
> 
> Same board here. Great build and my quadcore really helps with emerges. Make sure your power supply is both high quality and has ample rated wattage. I would avoid MSI motherboards. I haven't had much luck with them.

 

I've got a Thermal take 600w PS

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