Hi All,

Looking to tap into your knowledge and advice on a "Good" Asus motherboard for a Server...

We are currently considering moving to NT Server 2003 and want to upgrade the hardware at the same time since we are still using Pent II systems with NT 4.0

- What type / choice of Asus board would you suggest?
- Would you consider to go with a Dual CPU board? We could always add a 2nd CPU at a later stage if we only went single right now right?
- The network will consist of 1 location running on a network of about 30 users... and a 2nd server with a network of about 50 users or so.

- We are also consisdering doing a SATA Type (5) RAID Array with a Adaptec RAID card for Notification in case of failure. We currently use a SCSI Mirror setup under NT 4.0... I know SCSI is Faster, More $$$, and better warranty on the drives... But do you have any thoughts on why we should "NOT" consider the IDE Raid?

Thanks all!
Vince

Before anyone can answer this you'll have to tell us what kind of server it is. File? Print? Mail? A bit of everything? Do you need fast networking? Fast processing? Fast disk access?

Right off the bat I'll say you should really be looking at solutions from Tyan or SuperMicro.

Since you're currently running PIIs I don't think you need much processing power.

Maybe a <A HREF="http://www.tyan.com/products/html/tigeri7501r.html" target="_new">Tyan Tiger i7501R</A> with a <A HREF="http://www.3ware.com/products/serial_ata9000.asp" target="_new">3Ware 9000 series SATA controller</A> in a 64/66 slot. Start with one Xeon and however much memory you think you'll need and you can easily add a second processor or more memory later.

*Dual PIII-800 @900 i440BX and Tualeron 1.2 @1.7 i815*

Basically one server will be a Exchange Server, File Server, Print Server and the other servers would be used for a File Server and a Print Server...

Disk Speed is a bigger concern than processing power as we do run Pent II's as you said. We are going to do a IDE SATA Raid setup over SCSI based on price.

Hope that gives you some info to go on.

Eric

For a single CPU server I'd suggest an Intel manufactured 875P chipset board.

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i875 boards are nice, except you're limited with the 32/33 PCI bus.

I think you'll really want a board with a 64/66 PCI-X bus.

*Dual PIII-800 @900 i440BX and Tualeron 1.2 @1.7 i815*