Searching for a new motherboard

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dr_grid

Greeting! I am searching for a new motherboard, and would like to know what you might have recently purchased. I do have some constraints of course, the two main ones being I am old and cheap.

Mostly looking to build a backup gateway system with some NAS capability. We rely heavily on the network here as my wife works from home, and phone usage depends on the network. I plan to add other demands for the network as we move forward ( web server, mail server, DNS ).

Probably an ATX form factor will be fine, most things are negotiable. Two gigabit LAN ports would be nice, and I could use six SATA connections. But with PCI card slots, neither the LAN or SATA ports have to be on the motherboard. DDR4 or DDR5, would be nice to support ECC memory. I am agnostic about Intel vs AMD. No real desire for M.2 nor builtin WiFi -- I might use M.2 but I would not enable WiFi. Aura Sync I might find to be offensive by its mere existence ( I told you I was old ).

None of this requires the height in computing power. My first gateway was an Intel Atom chip; great for its low power usage, and fast enough for the job. And finally, this system will run FreeBSD.

Any input would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
I use the Asus Prime branded AM4 board. Works fine, does ECC. I think the Prime AM5 boards are equally good, but of course the memory costs much more.
 
cracauer@ said:
I use the Asus Prime branded AM4 board. Works fine, does ECC. I think the Prime AM5 boards are equally good, but of course the memory costs much more.
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Thanks for the information. I see that ECC support also depends on the processor. Which processor are you using on your Asus Prime AM4 motherboard?
 
ECC on AM4 is not worth it, you have a very limited set of motherboards where it actually works as in actually functions and reports issues (ASRock Rack mainly) but these boards have been reported randomly dying on various forums and are very expensive for that it is (especially compared to AM5).
https://rog-forum.asus.com/t5/other...t-support-ecc-mode-with-ryzen-ecc/td-p/836948 etc (running on ECC sticks but not utilizing it is very common unfortunately)

Do you really need PCI (not PCI Express slots) as that's legacy since a few years back?

AM5 platform will by far give you the best feature set / price ratio and it doesn't need to break the bank however it will not the be best platform in terms of idling. Also worth keeping in mind is that FreeBSD doesn't have (good) support for bleeding edge hardware or functionality such as big.LITTLE-ish CPUs etc.

Anyhow, in general...
ASUS ROG Strix B650E-E Gaming WiFi gives you a very good tradeoff between price/performance/PCIe layout. It supports ECC memory (if required), you have one Intel NIC and plenty of M.2 slots but do be a bit aware of some PCIe line sharing. It comes with 4 SATA slots and if you need more, pop in an ASM1166 based PCIe card (make sure to get a 2x PCIe wired version). It's the "older" B650E chipset however it supports all recent CPUs and actually has a better feature set than many of the newer chipsets including proving 2x PCIe 8x (electrical) slots.
See https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...-y_6hv8sPs/edit?gid=2064683589#gid=2064683589
It currently retails at ~200-220 EUR which is very hard to beat

Pair it with the cheapest AM5 7000-series (avoid F-series as these lack a video core) or 9000-series, do not get the 8000-series as these will cut PCIe lines (see Google doc linked earlier) and the included CPU cooler will be more than fine.

If you need more SATA slots, grab something like the GLOTRENDS SA3026-C, Silverstonetek ECS06 and so on. You can also get M.2 variants but be aware that you'll need to remove the heatsink for all M.2 slots except for the first one unless you do modifications. I would also strong recommend that you get a model which metal backplate (https://sairetail.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/M.2-to-SATA-6-Port_5.jpg) as they reportedly flex otherwise (given the M.2 size constraints).

As for NIC, can you easily find an Intel i226-v NIC for chips or the legacy i350-v2 models. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005010479404253.html or similar

While older DDR3 based systems might be tempting they consume quite a lot of power and aren't very efficient, unless you look at SFF models (which don't fit your requirements) and you'll easily eat up much of the potentially lower purchase cost in electricity bills within a short period of time.
 
The last MB I bought was a MSI. IMO as good as ASUS but cost a bit less.

Anyway, for none of your specification I see any real issue.
The core issue is not to get lost in the vast number of choices.
Only point you may look out for may be perhaps the GPU. My recommendation was to chose a graphis adapter card that works well with FreeBSD. If you're not much in graphics (3D design, computer games) or want to run some LLM locally, you don't need no most current power wonder, but any a couple of years old common mass produced medium class or below card will do.

My recommendation was:
Just start by deciding which CPU you want to run: AMD, Intel, number of cores,...
Since most MBs support more RAM than a common user needs (I decided for my last machine for 64 GB - was way too much for my needs of a user's desktop machine, but it depends on what you're going to do with your machine) you may look for which kind of RAM you prefer.
Most fumbling job is to check the lists of supported RAM working best together with a certain CPU, and what RAM is available. You better look out to get a suiting match.
Then I would focus on the number of SATA ports (ZFS raidz pools).
Rest doesn't matter mcuh, since most MBs provide almost all things needed, and if not are added for a few bucks with an extension card.

You may also take some time to pick a good PSU. You can save a lot of energy = money, when not chosing the most cheapest one.
 
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