[olug] Mobo/Video recommendations

[Obi-Wan]

>> OK, so my 7-yr-old dual P3 motherboard has finally breathed its last
>> -- at least for production environments.  I'm now in the market for a
>> new mobo/CPU/RAM/video/power combination.

After a bit of fiddling tonight, I determined that the problem was mostly
with a hard drive (the one containing /home).  Unplugging that permanently
and reseating my vid card now allows the box to boot just fine, at least
for server stuff that doesn't use /home.  I still want to upgrade in the
new few months, though.

FWIW, this was a 400GB Seagate hard drive that's probably only 2 yrs old.
It's got the 5 yr warranty, so I'll be making good on that soon.  Good
thing I keep a backup copy on another spindle...

> One nice thing, Gutsy has excellent amd64 support and things like flash 
> will work under an x64 install of gutsy without all the fiddling with 
> 32bit firefox stuff.

Is Gutsy's AMD support different than its Intel support in that regard?
I just put Gutsy on a new Intel 64-bit box at work last month, and got
no flash with the 64-bit version of Gutsy.  I had to back off to the
32-bit OS.

> My advice would be any twin DVI out pci-xpress nvidia card which will 
> probably mean a 7600 or better.  You should be able to get them fairly 
> inexpensively.  I suggest the twin DVI because considering how long you 
> had the last one you might as well get something decent ;)

Yeah, although I currently only have room on my desk for one head, this
machine will certainly outlast my current monitor, so I want to plan
for the future.  Thanks for pointing that out; I hadn't though to put
dual outputs on my wish list.

> 6 drives dual core I would atleast get a 600W

Yeah, I ran across an article tonight at TigerDirect that listed the
power draw of various devices.  If everything I have pulls the top end
of their listed ranges, I'm at 620W.

Thanks for the input.

-- 
Ben "Obi-Wan" Hollingsworth                             obiwan at jedi.com
   The stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the
     Giver of all good things, so if I stand, let me stand on the
       promise that You will pull me through.  -- Rich Mullins