Journey to replace broken hardware, motherboards and combos which did not work..

Hey guys, had a system (#1) which ran amazing for about 8 months and then had a hardware failure. I found out toward the end it was probably the RAM which was the last component i replaced (went with dual instead of single stick). I'd say it passed level 1, but dont have the logs to prove it sorry. The H/W failure was probably my fault due to it being in a small case with 4 HDDs inside. Specs below:

System #1 (good combo)

Gigabyte GA-D525TUD Intel Atom D525 @ 1.8GHz Motherboard/CPU combo (~$80)

OCZ DDR3-1066 2GB (single stick, ~$37)

Cheap case and PSU - PowerSpec 300W (cant remember model, but had room for 4 HDDs, and 3  5.25" bays, but was very small ~$35)

1x WD 1TB Black Series

3x WD 1TB Green Series

Thought the system ran great with my HDDs considering It only cost around $150 for all the hardware, and a good multibay external HDD case runs around that.

One morning I noticed the server went down, so I plugged in monitor and keyboard and tried to boot... and nothing, got flashing of LAN port and no post or anything (even after cmos reset). [later realized it was probably due to the RAM but oh well i have a faster system now  ]

Swapped out case/PSU, mobo, and by default needed a new processor so i went with AMD (usually been an intel guy)... picked up the following:

AMD Sempron 140 2.7GHz single core processor (figured i'd try the core unlock, which btw did not work with either biostar board, but did work with the later mentioned ASUS)

Biostar A880GU3

Thermaltake Dokker VM600M1W2Z ATX Mid Tower [much more room for everything to breathe)

Cooler Master eXtreme Power Plus 500 Watt ATX 12V Power Supply

Quite pleased with my upgraded but still cheap components I got everything together (except HDDs until I had a successful boot) and wound up with a kernel error... Error decompressing linux, halting system.

Couldnt get anywhere. Tried my linux distro usb... nothing... Google search... some hits but nothing useful for unraid... So back to the store with the mobo to to get a new one and different processor (was not sure if either was bad)...

Second attempt:

AMD Athlon II X2 255 3.1GHz DUAL CORE

ASUS M4A78LT-M LE

Liked the processor... but, yeah, turns out mobo is very different from the one without those 3-4 stupid letters appended to the end... actually ALL that series are basically the same... except this LE series...

Long story short, the NIC is no good for unRAID so it would not boot. I did get lucky though and was able to get into unRAID a little and it would hang on booting "kernel tainted"

Frustrated I looked up components which were on other boards and compatible in various boards (couldn't find an exact board but managed to find one with):

AM3 CPU socket

AMD 760G North Bridge

AMD SB710 Southbridge

Realteck NIC

ventured back one last time for the day (i'm sure the store loves me now)...

Decided upon:

Biostar A780L3G AM3 760G

Installed everything, and first boot right to the login prompt! Could not have been happier! Was disappointed to see the 2 extra SATA ports the ASUS had go (i only have 4 now which are all used), but can always get a  2.0 PCI express SATA card when i want to upgrade the drives in the future.

Sorry for the incredibly long post, but hopefully this will help someone not have to suffer through incompatible hardware... maybe they could have worked with tinkering... but with other options that just wholly work... why mess around with the others.

Thanks for reading.

-DB

Wiki updated.

Will make a new post for the current setup upon passing level 1 (and post logs).

cheers.

Thanks for detailing your experiences and updating the wiki.  This is pretty much the nightmare that scares off many from building their own servers.

Edit: I did make a minor change to your wiki work.  I removed the Biostar A880GU3 from the Hardware Compatibility List and added it to the Hardware Known To NOT Work section.  The Hardware Compatibility List is intended to be a list of working hardware.  Even though you clearly stated that it failed your tests, I figured it might be confusing to some.

Just one comment.

unlocking a core on a CPU where the manufacturer decided it would not pass their quality checks to be sold as a dual core is NOT the type of thing I'd do when trying to get a reliable server.  Who knows, your original board might have not had that kernel error if the CPU was working properly. 

In my opinion, t is a false economy to unlock cores on a server whose primary purpose is to safely and accurately hold your files.

Joe L.

Really curious that the Biostar board didn't work.

Nothing unusual about that board...880 NB, 710 SB, Realtek NIC.

Queeg Level 1 tested the MSI version.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11187.msg106959#msg106959

Rajahal --> thanks for fixing the wiki

Joe --> agreed. I didn't plan to use the core unlocking long term, just figured I'd let people know when it did/did not work just in case they were curious. My whole goal is low power consumption/heat creation to try to make the components run as long as possible.

Mbryanr --> Yeah I was disappointed and confused as well that the 880 did not work. It had to be the combo I was using (with the sempron). One other thing it may have been i forgot to include was the RAM was replaces along with that board, so it could have been the ram not letting it play nice. If anyone else can try it that would be ideal, but make sure you are able to return/exchange if you want to just in case it does not work. I actually am running 2 1GB sticks of DDR3-1300 now in the new setup.

Question though, considering the cost, and the fact that usb 3.0, hdmi, dvi, etc are useless for unRAID at this point; wouldnt the Biostar A780 be better than the A880 because it basically the same from the unRAID view, and its also cheaper?

According to newegg, the A780 has only a megabit NIC, so that's not a good choice.  Also, USB 3.0 could come in handy if you had another USB 3.0 device that you wanted to interface with the server, such as an off-site backup drive.

Personally I wouldn't choose either board because of the 4 SATA port limitation.  My personal favorite is still the Biostar A760G M2+, though I only know of two vendors that currently sell it - ChipsDigitalPC (recommended), and an eBay reseller.