I am building a new system and i am wondering if any one has used the
following motherboard;
asrock 775VM8
and is it any good. It will be used for a home network fileserver.
I am not bothered about graphics quality as i wont be playing games on it.
Not the best choice for a home network fileserver because it
runs P4 generation CPU which has more performance than you
need but a very poor efficiency so it's just creating extra
heat, power usage, fan noise/wear. However you could
underclock it, maybe (I dont' know if it supports FSB
changes or CPU voltage reduction), as much as possible
towards that end. It would not be possible to underclock it
"too far", the lowest possible speed is optimal for this use
as the performance will still be multiple times what is
needed. That's not to suggest it's a problem per se, but
not really matching the best platform for the job.
Even so, ignoring this yes it would work... as would just
about any board, there is no particular performance or other
issues involved with a fileserver since it has no need for
decent video or sound, even memory performance is fairly
irrelevant.
If you wanted to stuff a LOT of memory into it for some kind
of advanced configuration with a lot of drive caching, the
ideal would be a board with more than 2 memory slots, but
since it should allow 2GB of memory, that may be plenty for
your uses... would be more of an issue if you wanted to use
a lot of leftover memory to reach the total amount... but
even so, for typical uses a much smaller amount of memory
would suffice.
Does not have gigabit ethernet though, that is THE most
important parameter for limited # of clients (as in a home
environment) performance (presuming you either have or
eventually will have other systems with gigabity ethernet
functionality). A Pentium 1 200MHz system with a new hard
drive and a gigabit ethernet card would be faster. You
could add a gigabit nic pretty cheap or just choose another
board with one integral. I'd go with a different board
having it integral as the price difference shouldn't be much
more than the addt'l cost of the add-on nic.
