My Motherboard Experience starting up with unRaid.

Over the past couple of months, I've been through several motherboards.  Found one that did not work and a couple that did.  Thought I'd document them...

Use case for all of these are serving multiple Plex media streams (1-3), file backups, potentially serving as a MySql test server for Ruby development.

ASUS M5A97 AM3 4300 - worked with default settings.  Was an ok board.  AMD 4300 Processor worked well enough with 7 Drives and 16GB memory.  Did not stress test it.  Ran it about 1 month full-time with not a single error or config challenge.  Ran unRaid 6 b14, b15, RC3 on this board.  Used several different USB sticks.  Cruizer Ultra-FIT and Adata 16gb.

ASUS P8Z68v Pro Core I5 2500k - this was a nice board as a desktop and ran well for a long time under several configs Windows 7, 8.1 and Windows Server 2003, Windows Home Server.  unRaid did not like this board.  You can look under my posts in the April 2015 timeframe or just search on ASUS P8Z68v Pro.  LOTS of inconsistent, classically frustrating issues around a server Panic.  Tried everything.  Best I could do was 24 hours uptime before it crashed.  Performance was great, just not long-lived.

BioStar TA880GU3+ AM3 Fx-4200 AMD 880G - Nice board for a server with 6 Sata3 ports.  Not massive on power, but adequate for a couple of 720 streams.  Booted up and just worked.  No issues.  This was my 2nd server build for my son. It was a refreshing experience that built my confidence in unRaid back up.

ASUS P8Z77 Core I5 2500k - A couple small hiccups which were easily resolved (thanks unRaid community!).  This is now my main server with the config in my signature.  The biggest issue I had was that the clock on the board was not set correctly, so unRaid key wouldn't work properly.  Took several days and different rabbit trails to figure that out.  But once solved, its been running without issues for about 2 weeks.  Feels like a solid machine and I'm pushing files around getting it where I want it.  Started with BTRFS on all drives, then have been moving to XFS as it appears the wisdom of the community (80%) point in that direction.  Using BTRFS for the Cache drive at the moment.

If you're a newbie, be prepared for some challenges, but this is the best community I've ever seen for support and guys who really love working with unRaid.  And I love the fact that I can just toss drives at the system and grow it as I need.  Its a responsive, well designed and quickly maturing product.  I'd still say its a pro-sumer product, but I can see this growing into broader appeal.  I looked at a lot of the different options for media servers, spent a month just researching and looking (I came from WHS 2011) at reviews, forums, and such.  End of the day, in spite of the challenges with the ASUS P8Z68v Pro, I'm happy with my decision.  Solid product, outstanding community.  Works for me!

Can't wait to fiddle with some of the other interesting docker apps.  There are a lot of them!

Jeff, thank you for this feedback!  Very informative!!

ASUS P8Z77 Core I5 2500k - A couple small hiccups which were easily resolved (thanks unRaid community!).  This is now my main server with the config in my signature.  The biggest issue I had was that the clock on the board was not set correctly, so unRaid key wouldn't work properly.  Took several days and different rabbit trails to figure that out.  But once solved, its been running without issues for about 2 weeks.  Feels like a solid machine and I'm pushing files around getting it where I want it.  Started with BTRFS on all drives, then have been moving to XFS as it appears the wisdom of the community (80%) point in that direction.  Using BTRFS for the Cache drive at the moment.

I am very glad to read this as I have the same baord and same/similar objective as you (Kodi, media server, mysql, sabnzbd). I have not observed the hiccups yet, but am sure this will come. Can you point me to the watch-outs? Also, I "only" have 6GB of ram and wondering whether you expect signicicant improvements by adding more ram?

And last question, are you running a Win7 VM and what is your experience with this setup?