[CentOS] Centos-compatible motherboards

Sat Dec 28 17:07:03 UTC 2013
Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org>

On 12/27/2013 04:16 PM, Fred Smith wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 12:44:02PM -0600, Johnny Hughes wrote:
>> On 12/27/2013 07:11 AM, Fred Smith wrote:
>>> On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 03:40:43AM -0600, Johnny Hughes wrote:
>>>> On 12/25/2013 09:51 PM, Fred Smith wrote:
>>>>> Hi all!
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm toying with the idea of spending some Christmas money on a new MB and
>>>>> CPU to upgrade my desktop.
>>>>>
>>>>> Although I've always been partial to AMD chips, I'm tempted this time to
>>>>> find something Intel-ish, I5, quad core, or so.
>>>>>
>>>>> In looking at mommyboards  at New Egg and Amazon, I find so many I am
>>>>> unable to make reasonable determinations regarding suitability, so am
>>>>> hoping some of you who have new(ish) intel-compatible boards could 
>>>>> offer some hints.
>>>>>
>>>>> Also, I'd like to keep the cost of MB, CPU and RAM to no more (or little
>>>>> more) than $300-350. (seeing as how apparently mid-range I5 chips cost
>>>>> over 200 each, that may be a vain hope.)
>>>>>
>>>>> I expect that the newest ones may work with something bleeding edge
>>>>> like Fedora (et al), but I like centos for my desktop since it doesn't
>>>>> have the ridiculous churn rate of the more aggressive distros. I can't
>>>>> bring myself to relish the thought of rebuilding my main desktop twice
>>>>> a year (or even once a year).
>>>>>
>>>>> So, any suggestions will be greatly appreciated!
>>>> I personally have recently built 2 different systems with with the Asus
>>>> M5A99X Evo R2.0 motherboard.  This one does not have a graphics card ...
>>>> everything does work with CentOS-6.5 and RHEL7B1.
>>>>
>>>> It uses AMD CPUs and I have used several AM3+ CPUs, including Sempron
>>>> 100, FX-6150, and FX-8150.
>>>>
>>>> https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/M5A99X_EVO_R20/
>>>>
>>>> One of the nicest features is it will detect and set a working BIOS
>>>> memory timing with a press of a button on the board ... if you try
>>>> something manually that is incompatible, a simple press of the button
>>>> and reboot will get you back to a working config.
>>> Johnny:
>>>
>>> I assume it has UEFI and "secure boot"? did you disable the secure boot
>>> feature before installing? (AFAIK Centos doesn't yet support UEFI/secure
>>> boot????)
>>>
>>> I have an existing pair of drives holding Centos in a software Raid-1
>>> configuration, and I'm assuming I can simply move them to the new
>>> board, boot and be off to the races. Can you comment on that assumption?
>> The software raid-1 should work fine ... plenty of room for drives on
>> that board.  As long as you have a normal file system on sata dirves, it
>> should boot.  You may need to reconfigure the hardware (obviously,
>> different network cards, audio, video, etc.)
>>
>> The version of the BIOS that I currently have does have a secure boot
>> turn off feature. (1302 x64 is my BIOS version) Looks like there are 5
>> newer versions of the BIOS than the one I have installed now.
>>
> Johnny:
>
> Thanks once more for the info.
>
> one other thing I thought to ask about: my current gigabyte board, with
> Phenom II X2, somehow doesn't expost the Virtual extensions in the CPU
> in a way that VirtualBox can recognize it (I'm sure it's a VB bug, but
> I'd like to be rid of it), preventing installation of 64-bit VMs.
> Have you by any chance tried VB on that motherboard (with Centos) and
> noted whether it lets you install 64-bit VMs ?
>
> Thanks once more.

I use those boxes to run 64 bit VMs ... BUT ... I do not use virtualbox

I do know that with the Sempron 150, FX-6150, and FX-6350 CPUs on both
Xen-4.2.x (in Xen4CentOS) and KVM I can install 64bit VMs and it sees
the smx extension.

Whether or not it works with VirtualBox, I do not know.

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