> >1. unless one needs more ports than the motherboard > >offers, i would stick with on-board ports. > > That makes sense for me. Perhaps I could save money and > use the onboard network chip too (most RELTEK)? Then I > could invest more money in the board and the CPU.
some 8169 parts are pretty good. but there is a wide variation. some have pretty lackluster performance. > >3. if you set up a venti+fossil fileserver, you will have > >a quite seeky load and the performance of the controller > >should not be a big factor. but the performance of the > >disks will be. > > After reading many mails here I plan to run a fossil only > fileserver. So far I understand the "Ken" dedicated fileserver > has gone. ken's fs works for me. > > So disks >= 7200 u/min are ok? > you may wish to spend a little extra money (or get a smaller disk) and get "enterprise" sata disks. > >> For network cards the intel gbe cards seems to be the best? > > > >yes. the 82563 and 8257[12456] are particularly good. > > I could get a 82574L (PCIe) (Desktop pro CT - EXPI9301CT) for 30$. > Would this be a good buy? that's a very good deal. - erik
