best x79 motherboard for linux

[monkeytron]

Hi,

I'm looking at building a X79 based workstation for heavy duty parallel processing (running open source computational fluid dynamics software like OpenFOAM). Linux is a must for this. I'd like to overclock a 3930K to around 4GHz, but the most important thing is stability as it'll be running full chat on all cores 24/7 for a few days at a time. I've read a few things about ASUS boards not having good linux support - was hoping you guys could give me some advice on OC'ing in linux and which is a good X79 for it?

Thanks.

 

[txus.palacios]

Overclocking and stability don't get on well with each other.

I'd recommend you a Supermicro C6xx board, a Xeon processor and ECC ram if you need maximum stability for a production environment.

 

[monkeytron]

My budget is around £1250. I was expecting to be able to overclock a little and keep good stability? If not, then 6 cores @ 3.2GHz will be good enough. My main concern is linux supported X79 boards?

 

[txus.palacios]

My budget is around £1250. I was expecting to be able to overclock a little and keep good stability? If not, then 6 cores @ 3.2GHz will be good enough. My main concern is linux supported X79 boards?

As long as you don't go something exotic (you don't want to) you won't have a problem. I'd still recommend a Xeon processor, a C602 chipset board and ECC RAM for scientific calculations, though.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

4.0 Ghz or 3.8 Ghz seems to be a reasonable balance for stability.