ECS A740GM-M

Looking for some input on this board or if anyone has used it.  It looks like a decent board and newegg is running a deal right now on some motherboard processor combos.

The one combo is this board and a 4400+ Brisbane at 2.3Ghz

OR

this board and a 3800+ Windsor at 2.0Ghz

THe network chip is an Atheros which is not listed on the wiki and i was wondering if the chip is not supported at this time.  If not is there any plan to support it.

Thanks for the help

6 SATA ports gigabit LAN for $39 not bad curious if this works also.

that's funny I have that exact same thing sitting in my cart at newegg.  Was thinking about just getting it because I have a spare dlink 1gb laying around just incase.

that's funny I have that exact same thing sitting in my cart at newegg.  Was thinking about just getting it because I have a spare dlink 1gb laying around just incase.

yeah i know,  These would be the last things I have to get to finish off my server build.  Just trying to decide and find out if they will work.

Anyone that might know or has some experience with unRaid it would be grat to get your opinion.

I would like to refer you to a similar thread, with my concerns about the chipsets onboard:  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1667.msg11459#msg11459.  I do not claim to be an expert, but I would recommend waiting for fotd's report of the board.

that's funny I have that exact same thing sitting in my cart at newegg.  Was thinking about just getting it because I have a spare dlink 1gb laying around just incase.

 

yeah i know,  These would be the last things I have to get to finish off my server build.  Just trying to decide and find out if they will work.

 

Anyone that might know or has some experience with unRaid it would be grat to get your opinion.

Well if you can wait until Wed. I should be able to let you know how it works for me.  pfft newegg and their "rush order" is bs, I don't know why I always use it.  RobJ has some good points in that post, I've got a backup mb I know works if this one doesn't.

Well if you can wait until Wed. I should be able to let you know how it works for me.  pfft newegg and their "rush order" is bs, I don't know why I always use it.  RobJ has some good points in that post, I've got a backup mb I know works if this one doesn't.

So far so good.  Only got about an hour to build it today, but everything appears to be working fairly well. The NIC works and is copying data now (about 46MB/s to a share and 65MB to disk according to Vista sp1).  I haven't started the parity yet, or really tweaked anything.  Just booted it up and let it run.  I can post back after it's burned in if needed.  Special is still going on, although it went up $3 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135076 .  As RobJ said though buyer beware, there may be issues since the chipset isn't fully supported yet.

If you've gotten this far, then you are probably going to be fine.  I would have expected incompatibility problems to show up immediately, except for ports not working.  Congratulations!

From what I remember, there were specific problems with that chipset that required special patches, but unRAID only uses a limited number of motherboard capabilities.  For example, unRAID does not need audio or SLI support, so if the patches were related to stuff like that, then they don't affect you.  One problem I remember vaguely was an inability to see a second IDE channel without a patch, but since your board doesn't have a second IDE channel anyway, that should not matter.  Do try to check all of the SATA ports, and both of the IDE connectors.

Good to hear that there does not seem to be any problems with the board!!  I will probably be ordering one of the combo deals here soon to finish of my server build.

Thanks

I'm using the ECS A740GM-M with unRAID 4.3 Beta 6 and it seems to be working fine.  unRAID booted up perfectly on the first try and has worked flawlessly ever since.

My current disk array consists of the following, all using the onboard SATA ports :

1 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives (Parity)

2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives (Data)

1 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3750640AS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (Data)

1 Western Digital RE2 WD5000YS 500GB Serial ATA 3.0 Gb/s 7200RPM Hard Drive (Cache)

I'm currently in the midst of a massive data move from my cache disk to a user share, so I can't do an actual test but if I remember correctly the network transfer speeds to the data disks with parity enabled are around 8MB per second from Vista SP-1 and transfers to the cache disk are around 28MB per second.

I gather from these forums that the transfer rate is a bit poor, especially to the cache disk, but my cheapo Netgear Gigabit switch may be holding things back.

I'm using the ECS A740GM-M with unRAID 4.3 Beta 6 and it seems to be working fine.  unRAID booted up perfectly on the first try and has worked flawlessly ever since.

 

My current disk array consists of the following, all using the onboard SATA ports :

 

1 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives (Parity)

2 Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 ST3750330AS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drives (Data)

1 Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3750640AS 750GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (Data)

1 Western Digital RE2 WD5000YS 500GB Serial ATA 3.0 Gb/s 7200RPM Hard Drive (Cache)

 

I'm currently in the midst of a massive data move from my cache disk to a user share, so I can't do an actual test but if I remember correctly the network transfer speeds to the data disks with parity enabled are around 8MB per second from Vista SP-1 and transfers to the cache disk are around 28MB per second.

 

I gather from these forums that the transfer rate is a bit poor, especially to the cache disk, but my cheapo Netgear Gigabit switch may be holding things back.

Have you done the windows audio fix?  I'm pretty sure I ended up having to do it regardless of sp1.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1162.msg8269#msg8269

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2007/08/27/1833290.aspx#1841934

http://courtneymalone.com/2007/08/28/a-note-on-vista-network-speed/

I set up a new server using this board. The rest of the system is as follows

OCZ PC2-6400 2GB

BE-2350 processor

Coolermaster Centurion 590 Case (this case is cheap and has 9 5.25" bays)

4 in 3 raid or stacker drive cage

2 x 500 GB hard drives

Old power supply I had lying around

This system has worked perfectly from the first time it was powered on.

Right now, I'm running 100Mbps network in the house. I tried transferring a 2gig file. From the server to this computer windows is reporting ~85% network utilization and from this computer to the server I get ~75% network utilization. I like seeing these speeds but does XP report network utilization fairly accurately in the task manager?? At any rate, I expect that adding more drives will likely slow this thing down.

Peter

Hi,

Have anybody tried using ESXi on this motherboard.I was trying to install ESXI does not recognise the SATA controller.

Regards

Shoaib

This system has worked perfectly from the first time it was powered on.

lionelhutz-

Have you run a parity check?

Would you be willing to document "Level 1" compatibility with your motherboard?  All you need to do is run a parity check, then capture / post a syslog.

Read here

and here