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? thanks! -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community. --Roger Ebert, December, 1996 ----------------------------- The Boulder Pledge -----------------------------