Stuart Herbert

I’ve been trying to decide what motherboard / CPU combination to use in the file server since getting back from holiday. Ideally I’m after something that’s cheap, low-power, and has on-board SATA and PATA.

I’m a big fan of the Pentium-M, but there just doesn’t seem to be any ATX boards out there for this chip; not from my preferred suppliers at any rate. I could get an Asus socket 478 motherboard, and use their Pentium-M adapter, but I can’t find any evidence on their website that they’ve certified modern boards with the adapter I’m hoping to build a few more of these servers in the future for friends and family, and I’d rather not base them on something that I’m not confident will still be around when the time comes.

It’s possible to get a mini-ITX board for the Pentium-M, but I’d be looking at a cost of around £325 for a motherboard plus CPU - and that seems expensive compared to the VIA mini-ITX boards that are available.

Clock for clock, I find VIA chips very slow compared to any other x86 chip that I’ve used. I have two of these already in Linux-based firewalls that I’ve built in the past. Still - it’s a file server. The largest thing I’ll be building on there will be PHP 5 for the web-based admin software.

I ordered an EPIA SP 13000 from Mini-ITX.com on Thursday, with a stick of RAM. Never had a bad experience with these guys yet, and true to form my parcel was waiting for me next door when I got home from work tonight. I’ll pop down City Road after class tomorrow and pick up a couple of hard drives and a power supply, and hopefully I’ll have the machine booting tomorrow.