Motherboard/Linux recommendation for an i7-860 running Xen?

[Daniel Stripes]

On 09/29/2009 02:14 PM, Gerry Hull wrote:

> Has anyone had any experience with an i7 system and any of the retail
> motherboards out there?

I assembled this and another nearly identical (different cases, power
supplies, and number of hard drives; all else the same) i7-920 system a
bit over three weeks ago.  Hardware of concern consists of:

  ASRock X58 Extreme (http://tinyurl.com/pkn3qt)
  Mushkin 6GB (3 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 (http://tinyurl.com/ycccc87)
  EVGA GeForce 9800 GTX+ (http://tinyurl.com/5hlkzf)

I cannot speak to the endurance of ASRock's motherboards since these are
the first I've [knowingly] used.  Definitely the first I've purchased.
I also don't know whether there is a difference between i7-920 and
i7-860 that would be significant to the situation.

BIOS configuration for the RAM did not automatically come up as DDR3
1600 (PC3 12800) when I started the systems; the speed was slower (800,
I think).  The XMP profile was automatically detected, however, and I
merely selected it to get the faster settings.  I also have not tried to
take advantage of the overclocking options available in this
motherboard's BIOS.

> Which Linux is the best choice for a Host OS?

I'll leave that for everyone else to slug out -- I'm sure there are more
than a couple opinions around here about it.  I have been running Fedora
11 on both systems but not the x86-64 (yet).

> Thanks,

You're welcome.  I only hope it's helpful.

> Gerry

Daniel