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 has a 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.

Memory is obviously a concern but you can find deals from time to time, here in Sweden you can prebook 16Gb 5600 DDR (non ECC) @ ~80 EUR current. It'll likely ship in a month or two though....
 
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) - the more the better; while a PCIa extension card provding more ports cost a few bucks.
For the M.2 ports check the board's specs. Not every board providing more than one M.2 port offers the usage of all of them at once. (Question is also, if you really need more than one. I decided for having two in a mirror for the system, wouldn't do it again anymore. One NVME for the system was OK IMO. I cannot feel any significant gain in speed performance due mirror. And redundancy (raidz pools) is needed on /home, any of your personal data storages and of course backup, which you better keep on separate physical drives from the system anyway.)

Rest doesn't matter much, 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.
 
Maturin said:
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.
Click to expand...
Why you shop for GPU in a for gateway/NAS, did you even bother to read?
Brand agnostic is silly and every brand makes crap products, MSI is well.. far from the best especially on the AMD side of things (no ECC support etc). On the Intel platform they seem pretty decent however they seem to love to cheap on things such as Realtek NICs.
 
diizzy said:
did you even bother to read?
Click to expand...
Not your post, no.
dr_grid said:
Mostly looking to build a backup gateway system with some NAS capability.
Click to expand...
Doesn't read to me like building a NAS, but more as an option.
diizzy said:
Brand agnostic is silly and every brand makes crap products
Click to expand...
That's right. So do ASUS.
But OP particulary asked for, and I have no probs with MSI.
While you seem to have issues with opinions differ from your own.
(added to ignore)
 
Espionage724 said:
Can disable Management Engine on Intel, but haven't heard of anything about disabling or opting-out AMD PSP
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Both are required for the boot process (to some extent) and is normally not optional at all. Some legacy platform may support disabling it but then you have other much worse vulnerabilities to worry about or/and will affect overall performance.
 
diizzy said:
Both are required for the boot process (to some extent) and is normally not optional at all. Some legacy platform may support disabling it but then you have other much worse vulnerabilities to worry about or/and will affect overall performance.
Click to expand...
What specific hardware is that true for?
 
en.wikipedia.org

Intel Management Engine - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
Basically anything that's made for the past 5+ years

You have projects like this https://github.com/MangoKiwiPlumGrape/intel-me-disable but expect it to cause issues, https://github.com/MangoKiwiPlumGrape/intel-me-disable/issues/1 etc

That being said, specifically in this case why would you put a management interface facing Internet to begin with when there's no need to?

I also find things like this interesting, https://kb.protectli.com/kb/me-disable/

coreboot Version Changes - Protectli Knowledge Base

FW2B FW4B FW4C FW6 Series V1000 Series VP2410 VP2420 VP2430 VP2440 VP3200 Series VP4600 Series VP6600 Series
kb.protectli.com kb.protectli.com
All versions "ancient" (as for as updates goes) and there have been multiple vendor firmwares updates (for subsystems) etc, these are apparently of no concern. This approach makes little to no sense in terms of security and stability.
 
dr_grid said:
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?
Click to expand...

I have a 5950x.

I know ECC works because a friend has a similar system and he's getting 1-bit (corrected) error messages.

MSI does not do ECC.
 
diizzy said:
You have projects like this https://github.com/MangoKiwiPlumGrape/intel-me-disable but expect it to cause issues
Click to expand...
Yeah I'd expect that to have issues (ME wouldn't be notorious if it was that easy to disable just from the OS on software/drivers)
diizzy said:
That being said, specifically in this case why would you put a management interface facing Internet to begin with when there's no need to?
Click to expand...
HECI's a PCI device that takes resources: Even if it isn't internet-connected, disabling the whole subsystem frees resources that'd be otherwise put towards it.

Considering ME can replace CPU loop polling and communicate with BIOS after POST along with potentially providing AMT OOBM (some regions doing it without encryption), I'd argue disabling ME has security benefits (of course Intel would state disabling their own tech is a vague risk 😆)

diizzy said:
All versions "ancient" (as for as updates goes)
Click to expand...
Alder/Raptor's pretty recent (for disabling ME; not Coreboot): https://github.com/MangoKiwiPlumGrape/me_cleaner_thinkpad

I've used me_cleaner fine on Coffeelake and several Skylakes. Disabling ME is probably more useful than Coreboot support (HAP bit on Dell still allowed official BIOS updates while persisting the disable)
 
I've not bought a new motherboard in a while (10 or 12-ish years), but have always had good luck with GigaByte. Current offerings may not be the same.
 
I use an Asus WS C621E SAGE. It's not that new, but it's still pretty good. I'm not sure if it's still being produced. And it's large, of course - the EEB form factor, 12"x13".
 
Having a board that supports ECC can be useful in these times of very high memory prices, because you can buy cheap used server pull dimms off ebay, which are always ECC; they are cheap precisely because they won't work in most non-server desktop motherboards. On the other hand basing a system around ECC will restrict the choices pretty drastically. But if you're strapped for cash, it's something to consider.

The same goes for buying used xeons to base a system on; you can pick up the CPUs themselves for low prices on ebay. You can get cheap dual xeon motherboards from aliexpress, although how well they will work with freebsd, I don't know, however they are likely to be just fine. For example, this soyo X99 motherboard for pocket-money prices (which may or may not be a real X99, you will need to do your homework).


This more expensive board form Jingsha looks like a better quality one. It's got lots of on-board NVME sockets, and you can install up to 256 GB of ECC ram, which is pretty good. That would make a pretty decent system. Say if you wanted to do a lot of software building / compilation, or running VM's and/or LLMs; it's probably the wrong thing for gaming though, it's still basically a dual xeon server. I like the spec of that motherboard though, that would make a nice workstation if you maxed it out. For comparison, try pricing up what a good AMD or intel i9 desktop system with 256GB ram would cost.

There are a couple of big caveats, the first is those two xeons (and all the ram) are going to burn a lot of electricity, and the second is you'll most likely get better single-core performance from a recent amd ryzen system. However, if you happen to have the cpus and memory lying around, or otherwise available very cheaply, it might be worth a try; its certainly going to be a lot cheaper than buying all new kit.

I haven't gone this route personally, and "some assembly required", but it's worth mentioning it. I think Linus (the other one) has done some video reviews of these kinds of Shenzhen boards on yt.
 
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I don't know if others have the same experience, but for me "1 generation back" is a sweet spot in performance/price/supported/my use cases.
I start with CPU (all the integrated stuff like GPU drives the supported aspect), then look at motherboards to support that (again, can be 1 gen back supporting 1 gen back memory etc).
I also tend to max out on supported memory (as long as I can afford it); that tends to help overall performance on my use cases.
Oh, separate OS and Data (home dirs, shared data) devices make it a lot easier to upgrade things in the future.
 
the last one I bought was a
ASRock B650M-HDV/M.2 (I wanted to test out an Intel Battlemage GFX card)
before that
ASRock B450M Pro4 R2.0 (I tried to use thos as a machine to run local LLMs on, but my gfx card is only a MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G OC)
before that
Gigabyte B450M DS3H (this is my current main workstation)
 
blackbird9 said:
Having a board that supports ECC can be useful in these times of very high memory prices, because you can buy cheap used server pull dimms off ebay, which are always ECC; they are cheap precisely because they won't work in most non-server desktop motherboards. On the other hand basing a system around ECC will restrict the choices pretty drastically. But if you're strapped for cash, it's something to consider.

The same goes for buying used xeons to base a system on; you can pick up the CPUs themselves for low prices on ebay. You can get cheap dual xeon motherboards from aliexpress, although how well they will work with freebsd, I don't know, however they are likely to be just fine. For example, this soyo X99 motherboard for pocket-money prices (which may or may not be a real X99, you will need to do your homework).


There are a couple of big caveats, the first is those two xeons are going to burn a lot of electricity, and the second is you'll most likely get better performance from a recent amd ryzen system. However, if you happen to have the cpus and memory lying around, or otherwise available very cheaply, it might be worth a try; its certainly going to be a lot cheaper than buying all new kit.

I haven't gone this route personally, and "some assembly required", but it's worth mentioning it. I think Linus (the other one) has done some video reviews of these kinds of Shenzhen boards on yt.
Click to expand...

You need to differentiate between registered and unbuffered memory.

The ECC memory that the AM4/AM5 boards discussed so far are taking is unbuffered. It does not come down from big servers, which use registered ECC. Unbuffered ECC is fairly expensive, registered ECC is cheaper used.

To complicate thing, there are Xeons for unbuffered memory and single-socket.
 
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