Recommendation for Core 2 Duo motherboard for FC6

[ggulik]

I'm about to build a new system based on the Core 2 Duo E6400 processor. Room to grow to a faster processor later would be very nice.

I'd like something that "just works" with Fedora Core 6. I'd like as many PCI slots as possible. I know more motherboards only have 2 slots but I already have 2 cards I need to use and that leaves me with no expansion so a minimum of 3 slots is critical.

Built-in video capable of 3D graphics (Google Earth and Desktop Graphics) is a BIG plus.

Price not nearly as important as something that will "just work"

[steve941]

so .. built in intel graphics, hmm
so more of a value board im thinking. room to grow to a faster processor - As long as its Core 2 DUO.
Intel I terrible about compatibilty - they release to many chipsets which can't usually be upgraded to be backwards compatible. AMD has Nforce4, 5 both compatible with AM2. Intel to use Core 2 DUO, you need 965, 975 and some special 945 do but the problem is once they release something new youll need a new chipset and thus a new MB
anyway, if you want intel, the core 2 duo certianly kicks awesomeness on all tests ive read.
I recommend boards by ASUS
an issue is that built-in graphics and many slots is less likely as many integrated graphics are mATX and are smaller and have less slots. Anyway you may want to check out the ASUS P5B-VM
http://usa.asus.com/products.aspx?l1=3&l2=11&l3=332&model=1312&modelmenu=2
It seems to me, AMD systems are more linux friendly probably due to the chipset issue of Intel constantly releasing new chipsets more often. so "just works" .. there may be some issues with the new intel chipsets which will get fixed.
and lowest price seems to be here:
http://www.mwave.com/mwave/skusearch.hmx?SCriteria=BA23132&CartID=done&nextloc=

[ggulik]

Right, the Intel Core 2 Duo purely for performance reasons. I'm avoiding AMD mostly because of an enormous amount of problems building systems using them in the past. I'm also leaning towards Intel because Intel's 3D video hard is the only chipset that does 3D without requiring proprietary drivers. I have a Sony Vaio laptop with an Intel video card and that "just works" with FC6.
http://www.gagme.com/greg/linux/vaiofj-fc6.php

The motherboard you mentioned looks nice but only has two PCI slots. I have seen good motherboards without built-in video but then I'm faced with spending a lot of extra $$$ on a video card that at best will require proprietary drivers. I've used NVIDIA in the past and that's often a pain as well.

[steve941]

problems with amd?? what?

yeah, i don't recall knowing of any full size motherboards with integrated graphics. I havn't seen any.
So it looks like youll have to choose between small board with integrated open Intel graphics, or full ATX and buying eith ATI or NVIDIA and getting that to work. Well ... it seems you arnt super concerned with graphics you could get an older graphics card. It still has to be PCI X 16 since i think all core 2 duo boards have pci x 16. you could get a nvidia base 6200 or ATI x300 series.
my computer has an ATI x300 and there are open 3d drivers but they don't have full 3d support -- there's issues like terrible frame rates. but with time the kinks can get worked out and now that AMD took ATI, AMD is Linux friendly it seems to me and there may be a possibity they would open up the drivers.

[markkuk]

yeah, i don't recall knowing of any full size motherboards with integrated graphics. I havn't seen any.

Here's one: http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/DG965WH/index.htm
I ordered one for myself a couple of days ago, should be able to comment about its FC6 compatibility next week.

[ggulik]

Ok, I decided to go with the P5B-VM motherboard and I installed Fedora on it just fine but it's not recognizing the Ethernet device for some reason:

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 01)

I thought Realtek chips were supported in Fedora?

[sheenaramone]

That's disappointing, I wanted to build with the P5B-vm too. I tried installing FC-6 on a P5B with a 6600 LE card and booted to a command line screen. I was able to install on a Pentium D/P5LD2-VM, which has a 945 chipset and they have made a Rev 2 board that is Core 2 Duo compatible, but I would much rather use at least a 965 chipset or better.

I installed Edgy Ubuntu on the P5B but it simply won't run the scripts I want.

Were you able to get FC 6 on the P5B-VM to work by adding an ethernet card? That would be a small concession to make. I did that with the P5B and Ubuntu 6.06 but the Ubuntu ran slower than Windows, so I went back to Windows.

[ggulik]

I actually do have the P5B-VM working just fine with the built-in Ethernet running Fedora Core 6.

Amazingly enough ASUS tech support gave me the answer. There are Linux Drivers on the CD that comes with the motherboard. I seemed to only need the LAN driver. It was fairly easy to compile and modprobe. With the 2.6.18 kernel there is a minor edit that needs to be done. I essentially used the instructions on this site with FC6:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_RTL8168

Works great now! The only other glitch I had was that a DVD burner I had caused all sorts of IDE errors and resets causing the system to freeze. I googled the errors and the suggestions were to try a different drive. I swapped the drive with one from another system and the 2nd DVD burner is working flawlessly.

[sirius56]

markkuk, Please let me know if you had success with the Intel DG965SS board. This board has many good features, but I couldn't get FC6 or FC5 to recognize any CD/DVD drive. Thank you.

[markkuk]

You must use the "all-generic-ide" kernel parameter to enable the PATA controller, i.e. when you see the initial "boot:" prompt of the installer, type:
linux all-generic-ide
After installation, edit grub.conf to add the same parameter to the kernel command line.

[ggulik]

I just noticed Realtek released a newer version of the driver a few days ago:
http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/downloadsView.aspx?Langid=1&PNid=4&PFid=4&Level=5&Conn=4&DownTypeID=3&GetDown=false&Downloads=true#92

I just got a shiny new 1gigabit switch but I can't seem to get this ethernet driver to work at the full 1000mbits. ethtool wasn't able to change the settings and the options in the README file didn't work either.

Anyone get it to work?

[Linuxboy877]

Does the ASUS P5B or P5B Deluxe work just fine with every feature including the Temperature/Fan speed sensor(s) with FC6 except for maybe the integrated NIC? I have been looking for a motherboard for ages (a couple weeks) and still have not been able to find any motherboards I like that will work so far :(. The ASUS P5B or ASUS P5B Deluxe seems like a perfect match. Other possible motherboards which I might get are the GIGABYTE GA-965P-DS3 or the GIGABYTE GA-965P-S3; do these work just fine with FC6 with every feature including the Temperature/Fan speed sensor(s) except for maybe the integrated NIC?

If I have to use linux all-generic-ide then that will be fine as long as it is easy to update GRUB because I have never done that before in atleast 1.6 years that I have been using Linux.

This is discouraging because I am trying to build a PC from scratch for the first time :(

Thank You!

[ggulik]

I use the P5B-VM and so far almost everything works:

SATA works just fine.
Fan speed/temperature monitor sorta works. The sensors probably need to be calibrated:
lm78-isa-0290
Adapter: ISA adapter
VCore 1: +2.27 V (min = +2.85 V, max = +3.15 V)
VCore 2: +3.78 V (min = +2.85 V, max = +3.15 V)
+3.3V: +3.36 V (min = +3.14 V, max = +3.47 V)
+5V: +5.62 V (min = +4.76 V, max = +5.24 V)
+12V: +0.85 V (min = +11.37 V, max = +12.59 V)
-12V: -11.18 V (min = -12.63 V, max = -11.40 V)
-5V: -0.34 V (min = -5.25 V, max = -4.74 V)
fan1: 964 RPM (min = 18750 RPM, div = 8)
fan2: 907 RPM (min = 4963 RPM, div = 8)
fan3: 3110 RPM (min = 42187 RPM, div = 2)
temp: +45.0°C (high = +18°C, hyst = +65°C) ALARM
vid: +3.00 V

There are errors on the IDE Bus that may be fixed by the "all-ide-generic" but I haven't tried it yet. I didn't need to use that option to install FC6 on this system.

The ethernet works at 100Mbits just fine with the easily compiled drivers. I have NOT been able to get it to negotiate 1000Mbit with a 1000Mbit capable switch.

[Linuxboy877]

I use the P5B-VM and so far almost everything works:

SATA works just fine.
Fan speed/temperature monitor sorta works. The sensors probably need to be calibrated:
lm78-isa-0290
Adapter: ISA adapter
VCore 1: +2.27 V (min = +2.85 V, max = +3.15 V)
VCore 2: +3.78 V (min = +2.85 V, max = +3.15 V)
+3.3V: +3.36 V (min = +3.14 V, max = +3.47 V)
+5V: +5.62 V (min = +4.76 V, max = +5.24 V)
+12V: +0.85 V (min = +11.37 V, max = +12.59 V)
-12V: -11.18 V (min = -12.63 V, max = -11.40 V)
-5V: -0.34 V (min = -5.25 V, max = -4.74 V)
fan1: 964 RPM (min = 18750 RPM, div = 8)
fan2: 907 RPM (min = 4963 RPM, div = 8)
fan3: 3110 RPM (min = 42187 RPM, div = 2)
temp: +45.0°C (high = +18°C, hyst = +65°C) ALARM
vid: +3.00 V

There are errors on the IDE Bus that may be fixed by the "all-ide-generic" but I haven't tried it yet. I didn't need to use that option to install FC6 on this system.

The ethernet works at 100Mbits just fine with the easily compiled drivers. I have NOT been able to get it to negotiate 1000Mbit with a 1000Mbit capable switch.

ggulik, what kind of temp/fan speed sensor(s) does the ASUS P5B-VM have? And is it stable with whatever CD/DVD burners you have? I want to know what CD/DVD burners to use and if you can play DVD's without skipping with a DVD drive. What HD do you have? Where is the CD/DVD burners hooked up to, to the SATA or the PATA; the same for HD's?

See what the BIOS says about the temperatures, fan speeds and voltages and compare them. That should allow me to see if those values are off.

What IDE Bus errors do you get? Is it a known issue that those bus errors only come up with certain CD/DVD burners or HD's? Would you please post your dmesg and the relevant bus errors?

Thank You!

[ggulik]

I don't know what kind of sensors it has. I just used sensors-detect from the lm_sensors package and that's what it produces.

I'm currently using an IDE HP DVD+/-R drive but I've also tried a Smart & Simple DVD+R drive and they both produce errors like this in dmesg:
hda: cdrom_pc_intr: The drive appears confused (ireason = 0x01). Trying to recover by ending request.

Occasionally you can hear the DVD drive click and the system will pause for a second or two. I'd love to get this problem fixed.

I have ripped MP3s and burned DVDs with this drive and it seems to work fine. I have not tried to watch a movie on it yet.

I currently have the system fully loaded up with 4 SATA drives (1 boot drive + 3 in a RAID-0 config) plus I do also have another IDE controller in the machine to which I have three additional IDE drives in a RAID-5 configuration.

Oddly enough, I have tried to plug the DVD+/-R drive into the separate IDE controller and oddly enough I continue to get the cdrom_pc_intr errors so I'm not sure it has anything to do with this motherboard. The same drive and IDE controller used to be in another system running FC5 and there they worked just fine.

[Linuxboy877]

I don't know what kind of sensors it has. I just used sensors-detect from the lm_sensors package and that's what it produces.

I'm currently using an IDE HP DVD+/-R drive but I've also tried a Smart & Simple DVD+R drive and they both produce errors like this in dmesg:
hda: cdrom_pc_intr: The drive appears confused (ireason = 0x01). Trying to recover by ending request.

Occasionally you can hear the DVD drive click and the system will pause for a second or two. I'd love to get this problem fixed.

I have ripped MP3s and burned DVDs with this drive and it seems to work fine. I have not tried to watch a movie on it yet.

I currently have the system fully loaded up with 4 SATA drives (1 boot drive + 3 in a RAID-0 config) plus I do also have another IDE controller in the machine to which I have three additional IDE drives in a RAID-5 configuration.

Oddly enough, I have tried to plug the DVD+/-R drive into the separate IDE controller and oddly enough I continue to get the cdrom_pc_intr errors so I'm not sure it has anything to do with this motherboard. The same drive and IDE controller used to be in another system running FC5 and there they worked just fine.

Maybe you should update the BIOS? I have never done a BIOS update before so I don't know how to do that or what consequences that might entail.

[ggulik]

I upgraded the BIOS as one of the first things I did when I noticed the IDE problem. I'm currently running:

BIOS Information
Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
Version: 0405
Release Date: 09/21/2006