New mother board

[Lebarhon]

Hi,
I need to change my old Athlon 64 processor, hence the mother board also. My choice is about Intel i5 2500K and a MB Asus P8Z68VLX.
I want to use the integrates GPU
Does anyone know something wrong with this MB and MAGEIA ?
The main use are Internet, office, photo editing and multimedia. No games and no video editing.
I chose Asus because they always work fine with Linux, until now !
Thanks.

[doktor5000]

Just google around for problems of that mainboard regarding linux.
I can recommend Intel boards, they're not available everywhere, and they're not the cheapest, but it's the most hassle-free combination
and the support (f.ex. bios updates) is really good. IMHO Asus has quite a bad reputation among linux users. They make good mainboards,
for sure, but often they have some ACPI bugs which mostly affects only linux users.

[Lebarhon]

Thank you for the consultation doktor, I will follow the course of treatment and buy an Intel DZ68DB.

[doktor5000]

For what it's worth: first line of my previous post applies to every mainboard/component

[banjo]

I just replaced a malfunctioning Foxconn MOBO with an Asus P5G41T-M LX PLUS and it works fine. The MSI board I had originally put in the box smoked itself ( literally ) and I had replaced it with the Foxconn, which was a stinkzoid from day one. The Asus is a breath of fresh air compared to those other two.

Banjo
(_)=='=~

[wilcal]

My experience with Mobo's and Linux is mixed.
It all kinda revolves around what the Kernel
is of the Distro you have chosen. If you
choose the latest and greatest MoBo and use
an aging Distro there's a high chance that
it won't work. There's almost no way to test
this. It's part luck, part guess.

If you accept the fact that if you buy that
latest Gigabyte Mobo and processor it may
not work partially, or at all, but given
time and kernel releases eventually one
of the Linux Distro's will catch up and
it'll work.

Just about a year ago I purchased the parts
for and assembled the following system:

SandyBridge - Video editing machine
-----------------------------------
Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz overclocked to 3.8GHz LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core
GIGABYTE GA-Z68X-UD3-B3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
GIGABYTE GV-N440D3-1GI GeForce GT 440 (Fermi) 1GB 128-bit DDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16
CORSAIR Vengeance 16GB (4 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
Seagate Barracuda ST31000524AS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive
Sony Optiarc CD/DVD Burner Black SATA Model AD-7260S-0B
Thermaltake V9 BlacX Edition with Docking Station
Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus CPU Cooler
Kingwin KF-91-BK SATA Mobile Rack
Kingwin KF-91-T-BK SATA Mobile Rack Tray
Logitech K520 Wireless USB Keyboard & Mouse

The Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3-B3 Z68 MoBo was
just a couple months after release and weeks
after a major BIOS bug repair. I needed a
full up 64-bit Distro. At that time I was
very much into Mandriva and was hoping that
Cooker would handle it. It completely
failed. Also Fedora, Ubuntu ( 64-bit ),
Mint live CD's failed. I then tried,
and crossed my fingers, one of the
early releases of Mageia 1 and magic
happened. It worked wonderfully well.

Back a few years ago, I think like in 07,
I was working with an IBM 17in cash
register touchscreen terminal. It was
a brand new version and there was no
software available from IBM to make
it work ( on WinBlows that is ). I
plugged in Mandriva and it worked
like a charm. We demoed that thing
at a trade show in the IBM booth
and they were blown away.

So if your using one of the new MoBo's
it's a crap shoot. But, given a little
time, usually less then 3 -> 6 months,
one of the Linux distros will catch
up and/or the Kernel will update to
use it.

The LAN chip setup can cause problems.
Newer laptops with the latest and greatest
WiFi chipsets can cause problems.

[banjo]

I had a similar experience with Linux versions. I had Mandy 2008 running fine on the MSI board. I guess I didn't clean the computer properly because it overheated and blew out the MOBO.... with real smoke. These things actually run on smoke you know. I know that because when the smoke gets out, they quit working.

Anyway, I replaced the MSI with the Foxconn and a lot of stuff didn't work. The temperature sensors did not work. The sound did not work. The embedded ethernet did not work. I fixed those problems with addons because we were moving and I did not have time to fix it properly.

After the move I upgraded to Mandy 2010.2 and some of it started to work again. The onboard sound worked, and the onboard ethernet worked too. The temperature sense never did work. After a while, the onboard ethernet blinked out and stopped, so I went back to the addon card. Then, the SATA ports started throwing DMA READ failures, which caused the computer CPU usage to go up to 100% on both cores and hang intermittently.

The Asus MOBO has been in the box for about a week now with everything working and no more DMA errors. Here's hoping that it is fixed.

My next OS upgrade will probably be to Mageia considering the quagmire that Mandriva is in.

Banjo
(_)=='=~

[Lebarhon]

The more I dig, the less I know ...
Thanks anyway for your testimonies.
There another thing that disturb me. Most of mobos manufacturers have specialties, for example LanOptimizer or EZ smart response by Gigabyte or EPU & TPU or MemOK by Asus. Sometimes it is the chipset that allows new features, for example SSD caching with the Intel Z68. The mobos are shipped with Windows drivers to manage all that, but what about Linux, what takes care of all this new stuff ? The kernel ? It is impossible for it to take into account all features of every brand.

[doktor5000]

Which feature are you particularly interested in? SSD caching is quite useless when directly using an SSD (which you definitely should if you build a new system, get something like a OCZ Vertex 3) and is implementend in BIOS. EZ smart response is the gigabyte marketing term for this. MemOK is a feature that's hardwired, it just checks that your memory is OK, and then some LEDs light up. But it doesn't prevent you from doing a memtest, and it also doesn't help with broken RAM. It's quite useless IMHO, too.
LanOptimizer is also quite useless and implemented as an application, which switches some profiles, but you're better off with the linux network stack in general, believe me.

EPU may be the only one that has a real value, as it can save lots of energy, i'm not sure to what extent that's supported by the kernel and drivers (it also needs graphic card driver support, f.ex.) But looking at this: http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?boa ... uage=en-us seems it's not supported at all.

So to summarize, most of this new stuff are just gimmicks, and sadly makes the mainboards more error-prone. My experience comes from assembling and repairing hundreds of OEM-style custom built machines, all built from "quality" hardware, mostly Intel boards, but also Gigabyte and Asus boards.

[banjo]

We just built a new computer from parts for my daughter. She is running fnWindows 7 on it. We put an Asus MOBO in the box, and it ran fine for one day. On the second day..... there was nothing. It would not even run POST. So we RMA'ed the board and finally had a replacement two weeks later. That board seems to be working OK. Her MOBO is a different model than the one I just put into my Linux box. So I guess it is difficult to make a call just on brand name.

Banjo
(_)=='=~

[rollercomsolutions]

I know this is kinda late in the convo but i've used Mageia on My Asus M4A89GTD USB3 and it's running like a champ. [on this board i use the MEM OK Feature to start my PC everyonce in a while due to me Adding 8 Gigs of Patriot 5 memory when the Manual States this board only supports 6 Gigs of Patriot 5 Memory, i should have read the PDF version before ordering both the mobo and memory but oh well the MEM OK feature does a calibration and allows the system to use unsupported memory configurations.] I also have it installed on a Asus mobo from 2005/6 and it's also running very perfectly. The netbook loves Mageia, the old Z1A Viao Loves Mageia, The Toshiba Satellite i have loves Mageia, Even The Dell XPS Is Blazing Fast With Mageia, As Is The Dell Inspiron. But Concerning SSD's i could only afford one and i put it in the pc i've yet to mention and i'm so totally amazed with the super high speed it provides. I'll share a video link if you guys wanna see it in action just let me know. The pc is a Gateway Notebook NV53 [AMD Athlon II X2 M300|4 GB Ram| It's Blazing Fast And Makes Me Smile Everytime I Boot Up Or Update Or Grab Files Of My Big Box [wireless N is amazing] The SSD I Got Is The Samsung 830 64GB and The reason i decided on that one and not the Vertex 3 is due to alot of forum reading and Anandtech reviews. My biggest concern is reliability and i didn't want to order a SSD that might brick on my sooner than later so when i saw the review on the Samsung 830 it really made me feel like this is the perfect choice for me. Anand even mentioned that he has some of Samsungs Original drives from when he first started reviewing SSDs ('09 i believe) and they all still run just fine. That's a great track record and even though they don't make the top of the charts when it comes to benchmarking, i am pleased with the high performance get out of this Gateway due to the 830. Though i'd share this and let ya know.
P.S. I signed up for the QA team and i'm wondering if there's something i'm missing or if maybe i'm just a lil to shy to dip my feet the community waters but i'd love to report some of my successes and failures with Mageia Installs and Let you know what ended up working for me. (there are a few more pc's i've installed it on that i forgot to mention.) Any pointers would be cool, if not i'm still reading through all the pages and will surely figure it out so i guess this is my Hello and Thank you to everyone Involved this is Quite An Amazing OS.
-RollerCOM Solutions (Arizona, USA)

[doktor5000]

The SSD I Got Is The Samsung 830 64GB and The reason i decided on that one and not the Vertex 3 is due to alot of forum reading and Anandtech reviews. My biggest concern is reliability and i didn't want to order a SSD that might brick on my sooner than later so when i saw the review on the Samsung 830 it really made me feel like this is the perfect choice for me. Anand even mentioned that he has some of Samsungs Original drives from when he first started reviewing SSDs ('09 i believe) and they all still run just fine. That's a great track record and even though they don't make the top of the charts when it comes to benchmarking, i am pleased with the high performance get out of this Gateway due to the 830. Though i'd share this and let ya know.

Greatly appreciated, so far i've only used/recommended Vertex3 due to the speed they provide.
Currently reading some reviews (i also like Anandtech, they do great reviews )

[banjo]

My Asus MOBO running Mandriva 2010.2 is still working top notch. The PC boots from power button to login prompt in 40 seconds.

I occasionally look in /var/log/messages for more reports of DMA READ errors from the disk and I have seen none since I replaced the MOBO.

Banjo
(_)=='=~

[rollercomsolutions]

Greatly appreciated, so far i've only used/recommended Vertex3 due to the speed they provide.
Currently reading some reviews (i also like Anandtech, they do great reviews )

No problem i'm glad to help out. Also it's nice to meet you. And yes Anandtech is amazing they have some very insightful articles.