Good workstation boards?

[Fraser Corrance]

Looking for a good model of fairly generic Intel motherboard to use for data recovery workstations. Needs to have integrated video, a built-in CPU, PCI slot, and at least 4 SATA ports. IDE would be nice. Any suggestions?

 

[DMC Unlimited]

Not seeing any Intel boards with those options, but this is an AMD option to consider: GA-78LMT-USB3

We have 4 data recovery workstations in service at our shop at the moment and we tend to use old boards in these machines. While we certainly prefer Intel, we have used AMDs in these units for internal use.

 

[wolfson]

We have 4 data recovery workstations in service at our shop at the moment and we tend to use old boards in these machines. While we certainly prefer Intel, we have used AMDs in these units for internal use.

Have you had any trouble with AMD workstation boards in the past? Have you ever bought new ones, or just old?

 

[DMC Unlimited]

Have you had any trouble with AMD workstation boards in the past? Have you ever bought new ones, or just old?

We have used new AMD boards/CPUs internally (we use Intel in all of the custom builds that we sell) and I've never had any issues with them. I've started using Gigabyte for all of our builds since Intel stopped manufacturing their own desktop boards a few years back, and I've been very happy with their quality/longevity so far. The model I recommended to you is an older one, but it had the PCI slot as well as IDE on-board (rare these days). You can always stick an IDE controller card in your system as an alternative to having it on-board. There should be more options out there if you take the on-board IDE out of the equation.

 

[wolfson]

We have used new AMD boards/CPUs internally (we use Intel in all of the custom builds that we sell) and I've never had any issues with them. I've started using Gigabyte for all of our builds since Intel stopped manufacturing their own desktop boards a few years back, and I've been very happy with their quality/longevity so far. The model I recommended to you is an older one, but it had the PCI slot as well as IDE on-board (rare these days). You can always stick an IDE controller card in your system as an alternative to having it on-board. There should be more options out there if you take the on-board IDE out of the equation.

OK, thank you so much! That is very useful. (I didn't realize that Intel had stopped making their own desktop boards.) IDE is nice for those 1 in 100 recoveries off an XP machine, haha.

 

[DMC Unlimited]

OK, thank you so much! That is very useful. (I didn't realize that Intel had stopped making their own desktop boards.) IDE is nice for those 1 in 100 recoveries off an XP machine, haha.

Yeah, I'm surprised by how many IDE drives still come through our shop too. We also started using an external USB enclosure to access IDE drives, but there are times when connecting it directly has produced better results in certain situations.

 

[wolfson]

Luckily a few of our workstation boards still support IDE, but especially with laptop drives it's hard to find non-bent adapters. So we mostly end up using those crappy little IDE to USB2 adapters.

 

[DMC Unlimited]

Luckily a few of our workstation boards still support IDE, but especially with laptop drives it's hard to find non-bent adapters. So we mostly end up using those crappy little IDE to USB2 adapters.

We have the same problem with the laptop adapters, but we continue to use them too.