Best motherboard for stability with LOTS of peripherals

I'm looking for a board that's stable even with lots of peripherals. I have a GF4 AGP 8x card, Hauppauge TV tuner card, Audigy2, Highpoint RocketRAID 404, LSI Logic 21320 SCSI card, 7 hard drives (1 SCSI, 6 IDE), 1 CDRW, 1 DVD, 1 DVD+RW. This is in addition to any built-in peripheral onboard like LAN controller, firewire, USB controller.

Right now, I just finished plugging everything onto an Abit IS7 and it's not working very well. Lots of conflicts.

I understand that part of the stability has to do with the firmware and driver implementation of the individual peripherals. But I'm sure the motherboard implementation (e.g. of the PCI bus/slots) is also critical in determining overall stability.

Does anyone have any recommendation in this regard?

I'm considering the following boards and any other you can think of:

1. Abit IC7
2. Asus P4P800
3. Asus P4C800-E
4. Supermicro I865 or I875 based board (considering this since Supermicro has a strong reputation on building server boards where you likely have lots of peripherals and where stability is the primary concern.)

Thanks for any input/recommendation.

Best choice would be P4C800-E

I recommend Supermicro for SOLID ROCK stability...But you will sacrifice ANY tweak-ability. There will be no overclocking, tweaking, etc.

http://www.supermicro.com/PRODUCT/MotherBoards/865/P4SPE.htm

I own two mobos that are built by Supermicro, have yet to experience a crash, resource issue, etc. Both are for dual PIII configs.

When you put the system together, Supermicro mobos will work with little or no issues.

Supermicro always designs their mobos with Intel's advisors.

They have a very close relationship...This often results in NO AMD platform by Supermicro.

Anyway, if you need to tweak, go with another brand. If you want stability are your number priority, then Supermicro is the one to go for.

Make sure you do the checking by downloading the manual and see if the mobo suits your needs and how it shares its resources.

For the Supermicro P4SPE (i865) mobo

PCI 1 shares an IRQ with AC97, CNR, and SM* bus
PCI 2 has a dedicated IRQ (does not share)
PCI 3 shares an IRQ with USB controller #1 (USB0 & USB1)
PCI 4 has a dedicated IRQ (does not share)
PCI 5 has a dedicated IRQ (does not share)
PCI 6 shares an IRQ with USB controller #2 (USB2 & USB3)

Oddly enough, it has an option to adjust your FSB!
In the BIOS, there's an option "CPU Clock"

Key in the number you want to set for the CPU clock (MHz). Supermicro does not recommend or make any guarantees with CPU overclocking.

SO guess there is some tweaking on this mobo...

I'd suggest the Intel 875PBZ.

Rock solid Canterwood board and you can even OC it a whopping 4%!

Does the Intel 875PBZ still have Bios problems or have they gotton it sorted out. Several forums ive visited seem to have indicated pretty much every single bios update is screwed up in some mannor except for 1. Dont remember off hand what bios version that is.

Agree with Ralf Hutter. D875PBZ is great for stability.

Freezermug said:

Does the Intel 875PBZ still have Bios problems or have they gotton it sorted out. Several forums ive visited seem to have indicated pretty much every single bios update is screwed up in some mannor except for 1. Dont remember off hand what bios version that is.

Click to expand...

The latest (P16) seems to have everything but an occaisional cold boot issue sorted out. Most people seem to be using it.

I'm sticking with P05 for now, no coldboot/reboot issues at all and PAT is still enabled.