[wsume99]

Gigabyte boards are safe as long as the Backup BIOS Image to HDD option is disabled by default on your board (and you never enable it). This is true on just about every recent Gigabyte MB I've looked at - which was not the case for boards produced just a few years ago. I've run Gigabyte boards in my server and I've never had a problem so long as I stuck to those guidelines.

Also, using an Intel "T" CPU in a media server is a waste of money IMO. There are numerous reviews out there which show that at idle the "T" version does not use any less power than the non-T version of the CPU. The difference is only noticeable at full load and since your server is likely to be running at idle or very low CPU load I don't think the T version CPUs are worth the extra money.

[publicENEMY]

the biggest problem with unraid is network card. make sure your nic is compatible. while unraid is nice, setting it up perfectly is a pain.

[powerplyer]

Thanks for the feedback. I also did some more research and you are correct no need for a T version.

If anyone has advice on a MB 1155 to support 530 which has compatible GIGE for version 5 of UNRAID, it would be great appreciated.

I am almost there .

[wsume99]

If you want to 100% avoid NIC problems then you have one solution - get an Intel NIC. My current MB suffered from the random realtek NIC issues so I dropped an Intel PCI NIC in there and it's been rock solid ever since. When I upgrade to v5.0 I'll pull the Intel NIC to see if I can run off the on-board realtek NIC again but I'm not there yet.

SO - you could try your Gigabyte MB and just see how it works and if you run into problems you could always drop in an Intel NIC later. It would cost ~$30. That would be much cheaper than getting a new MB. You're not going to really see any appreciable increase in power use if you need to go that route (I know I didn't - maybe like 1-2 watts at most).

[GortWillSaveUs]

Gigabyte boards are safe as long as the Backup BIOS Image to HDD option is disabled by default on your board (and you never enable it). This is true on just about every recent Gigabyte MB I've looked at - which was not the case for boards produced just a few years ago. I've run Gigabyte boards in my server and I've never had a problem so long as I stuck to those guidelines.

Also, using an Intel "T" CPU in a media server is a waste of money IMO. There are numerous reviews out there which show that at idle the "T" version does not use any less power than the non-T version of the CPU. The difference is only noticeable at full load and since your server is likely to be running at idle or very low CPU load I don't think the T version CPUs are worth the extra money.

Thanks for clarifying!! This is great since Gigabyte seems to have the most MOBOs with at least 6 sata connections.

[wsume99]

^^No problem. FYI - The reason I know is because when I first built my unraid server I wanted to use a Gigabyte MB that I already had. Rather than succumb to all the FUD about Gigabyte MBs on the unraid and xbmc forums I did my homework and I have safely used two different Gigabyte MBs in my server over the past two years.