Mobo chipset for a home server...

ramdor · 20 Oct 2013 at 11:28

Hey folks,

We have a spare 3770 intel cpu (ivybridge socket lga1155), and we are looking for a suitable mobo. We are planning on running a number of VM's on it (VMWare) so it must have 32gig's at least.

I was wondering what the consensus would be on the best chipset to go for, Z77 or something else? We do gravitate normally to ASUS, but you guys know what you are on about, so I look forward to your opinions.

Cheers.

mickyflinn · 20 Oct 2013 at 12:01

If your 3770 is the non K version then you could go for a H77 motherboard, but i think the Z77 and H77 supports a maximum memory of 32gb.

ramdor · 20 Oct 2013 at 12:16

yeah, its the non K. The vm's are doing things like running XP for a legacy printer/scanner combo that we don't want to part with quite yet, SBS (exchange + sql + dhcp etc), home automation, stuff like that. Not overly processor intensive.

The H77 looks interesting as we wouldn't need sli/crossfire or overclocking. Although we do have an LSI MegaRAID SAS 9280-24i4e which it needs to be able to cope with etc, and loads of network file transfers.

I am trying to find a chipset that will give it any advantage it could get if possible.

mickyflinn · 20 Oct 2013 at 12:27

The above card only needs a x8 lane PCI Express® 2.0 slot which modern motherboards have anyway at x16.

I would look closely at features on the motherboards, such as ports etc, and then make your choice accordingly.

There will be no advantage in performance between the H77 and Z77 chipset.

ramdor · 20 Oct 2013 at 14:42

Thanks micky, we are going to make do with a H61 mobo we have around here spare atm, and upgrade it in the future. Limited to 16gb with it, but we'll see how it goes.