Advice on motherboard purchase

[Joep L. Blom]

Franz Waldmüller wrote:
> Hi r,
> 

> I would like to keep my budget small, but I know that often it is better
> to invest some extra dollars. My performance demands are most of the
> time quite low but when editing image collections and videos I need
> quite lot of processing power. Sometimes I need to have some virtual
> machines running as well. That is why I want to go for an AMD Phenom II
> 955 and 4 GB of ECC memory. I think this CPU should have enough power
> to start an LTSP-server for one client (I want to avoid to buy a new PC
> for my girlfriend as well. (I will start a separate thread on the LTSP 
> question.)
> 
> I don't like to shop online, but I will describe my setup more in detail:
> Part	Model	US$	Euro	
> CPU	AMD Phenom II X4 955 (C3) Black Edition, 4x 3.20GHz, boxed	US$181
> Euro 132	[1]
> 
> Motherboard	ASUS M4A89GTD Pro/USB3, 890GX (dual PC3-10667U DDR3)	US$162
> Euro 118	[2]
> 
> Memory	Kingston ValueRAM DIMM Kit 4GB PC3-1333 ECC CL9 (DDR3-133)
> US$136	Euro 99	[3]
> 
> harddisk	2 hard disks from different vendor for RAID 1 (1,5TB)	US$247 
> Euro 180	
> 				
> With a case and a PSU for 60 Euro each I end up with 650 Euros or 890 
> US$ for the complete setup. When shopping in the United States of 
> America this setup would be much cheaper as vendor tend forget the 
> exchange rate and only exchange the currency symbol when selling their 
> products in Europe.
> 			
> [1]
> http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/processors/phenom-ii/Pages/phenom-ii-pib.aspx 
> 
> 		
> [2]	http://www.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=eCWbkolMf0DOW0IV&templete=2			
> [3]	http://www.valueram.com/server/server_memory.asp			
> [3f]	KVR1333D3D8R9S/2G	,
> 
> The CPU is quite a work horse, but I need a quite a high single core
> frequency as Gimp and Inkscape are not multi threaded. And I think I will
> need more than two cores quite often.
> 
> Thanks for the suggestions to look for a dedicated video card. I 
> consider buying a motherboard without IGP, too.
> 
> Thanks for the suggested online stores.

> Franz

Franz,
I have build a system rather similar to what you want last year, using 
parts provided by a local (dutch) hardware store.
MB: ASUS M4N78 PRO (an older version fo waht you want)
CPU:AMD Phenom(tm) II X4 810 Processor (yours is somewhat faster)
Mem: 4 Gb DDR2 Synchronous 800 MHz (I think Kingston but I'm not sure)
Disk: SAMSUNG HD502HI 500 GB
   I have a 1 TB USB disk and  250GB USB disk but I don't use large 
video files, only music (in .wav format) and I have still sufficient space.
If you want to know the prices I'll dig up the bills but they are prices 
for 2009.
The system is my workhorse and I use it a.o. for a rather heavy windows 
program running XP in VMWare Player and it works OK.
Just my response to your request.
Joep