Review of the Asus P5N-MX (LGA775) mainboard for use as a Linux File Server

I'm kind of an odd person. In my house, I have a closet that serves as the central hub for all my networking. It's sort of an odd hybrid of cheap IKEA utility shelves coupled with some rack mounted equipment.

I put "servers" in this closet too and serve files from this closet. Back in my university days, it was the "geek" thing to do: in fact it helped me tremendously during an advanced networking course as it meant I had my own in-house lab. Nowadays, it is more of a carry-over tradition. I have gone from a huge network of many servers to an array of embedded devices (WRT54GLs running OpenWRT) and one/two PCs running Linux.

Recently, one of the hard drives on one of these PCs decided to quit working. I had been mildly expecting it to happen (after all, hard drives nowadays tend to only last their warranty period...) so I had been diligently backing up to a mirror drive each day. When it finally died, I decided it was also time to upgrade the computer.

So, I went looking for a decent, low-powered, fast computer solution and came across the Asus P5N-MX motherboard. Now this isn't your gamer's motherboard, but what it does have is built in LAN, Video, Sound and RAID functionality, and a price tag that fits the budget: perfect for what I wanted to do with it. I purchased it along with a Pentium Dual-Core CPU - about the best Intel dual core CPU you can get on the market for under $100 that isn't a Celeron. I considered getting one of the higher end CPUs (such as a Core 2 Duo or higher) but I was on a budget, and frankly it was wasting money for the intended function of the machine.

Total price for case, CPU, motherboard, memory and new hard drive came to $300. Not bad considering I'm upgrading from a Pentium III 800Mhz!

Assembly and Regret

I bought the parts at a local computer shop, and two hours later, I had the thing assembled; gave it its first boot when all I heard was one long beeeeep! My heart sank. Out came the tools again, and soon through the process of elimination, I discovered I had a stick of faulty RAM.

(Side note: Now the funny thing was that a couple of years ago, I had vowed never to buy a home-built computer again - not that I was afraid of them, but simply that they had outlived their usefulness. One used to get home-built computers because they were no worse than the stuff you got from Dell or HP, but nowadays, things are different. I had convinced myself after working in IT for many years that purchasing name-brand actually was justified on warranty and heavy integration testing purposes alone. But, like many-a-times before, I was lured by the price and convenience of a home built computer. So when I discovered the faulty RAM, it reconfirmed my previous fears.)

Problem #1: Faulty RAM and/or lousy BIOS

After replacing the RAM (and kicking myself for not following my own advice and buying Dell), I got the machine working... sort of. All would seem to work except for a memory test failure every time I booted the computer. So I replaced the RAM yet again, and began to think to myself whether it might be something else. After much searching and at the advice of the technician at the local shop, I decided it might be a BIOS problem, so I upgraded the BIOS from version 01xx to 0402. Mysteriously the RAM problem went away.

Problem #2: Lousy ASUS documentation

One of the things I was quick to discover was the though ASUS is a reputable motherboard manufacturer, they really lack good documentation. Nowhere in the BIOS readme file did it even so much as mention that the upgrade solves memory problems. It brings to mind two questions:

-- Why did the motherboard not ship with a newer BIOS?
-- Why do they not document new BIOS features and fixes in detail?

Problem #3: False reports of an overheating CPU

I then focused my attention of another problem that had appeared in the meantime. The reported temperature of the CPU (according to the BIOS) was 71C! I knew this was erroneous because of the very cool heat sink sitting snugly attached to the CPU. It wouldn't really be that annoying except that all of the fan speeds are tied to this temperature! So even though the CPU was cool, the fans spun at full speed.

I searched all over, but could only find vague references to the problem - and in almost every case where it was mentioned, the defacto answer was that the fan assembly was somehow to blame.

True as that may sound, it was not the case, and in the end, I concluded it must be yet another BIOS error. This time however, I was out of "released" BIOSes to upgrade to, so only after reading a vague review on Newegg.com did I figure that upgrading to the latest "beta" BIOS (version 0601) might solve my problem.

I did upgrade, and it did solve my problem. I am finally happy with my new server on which I have installed Ubuntu server and created a giant file share using CIFS and NFS on my RAIDed hard drives.





Conclusion

It has been several years since I have bought and assembled a home-built computer, but now, more than ever I am convinced that it may not always be the best option. Until motherboard companies can begin to act responsibly and provide adequate testing of their BIOSes and provide detailed documentation of their upgrades, it seems like a lot of work and frustration for having saved not that much money.