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. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20131228/371f2473/attachment-0005.sig>