MiniITX motherboard with soldered AMD APU.

[nas_py_lord]

I've come up with this motherboard, with CPU onboard, sata3 and usb3: http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/E350M1USB3/, and this one, with an inferior apu and no usb3: http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/E35LM1/?cat=Specifications.
There are really cheap, and the second one is almost half as the first one. The one with USB3 is almost 90 U$$ and the one without it 54 U$$ more or less. This boards, are ideal for a home server. I want to know if someone has these boards, or if there are good for a NAS, especially the soldered AMD APU.
USB3 is better for having the OS on a USB3 pendrive also, or USB2 is enough?, if USB2 is useful, I will save like 50 U$$

[raulfg3]

USB2 is enought, you don't notice speed improvements using USB3 in normal work ( only boot in less time, but NAS boot one time and works all time).

only spec that can be determinating is RAM, cheap MAX. RAM is 8GB and the other is 16GB, if you plan to use ZFS and advanced featues, like dedupe, etc.. you need 16GB of RAM, if you use ZFS only to share by SMB or AFP, wihtout advanced ZFS features , 4 or 8 GB is enought.

[alexey123]

I was check Saphhire motherboard as NAS.

Work fine, but I use it as XBMC.

[nas_py_lord]

USB2 is enought, you don't notice speed improvements using USB3 in normal work ( only boot in less time, but NAS boot one time and works all time).

only spec that can be determinating is RAM, cheap MAX. RAM is 8GB and the other is 16GB, if you plan to use ZFS and advanced featues, like dedupe, etc.. you need 16GB of RAM, if you use ZFS only to share by SMB or AFP, wihtout advanced ZFS features , 4 or 8 GB is enought.

I think I will use Markvision ram sticks, there are like 10U$$ less than Kingston or Corsair models. Deduplication I think I will use, if it is going to save a lot of hard disk space, its worth it. USB3 will be useful mainly for the backup, even though I dont know if USB3 is faster than eSATA, it is?.

[nas_py_lord]

I was check Saphhire motherboard as NAS.

Work fine, but I use it as XBMC.

What do you mean by using it as XBMC?, the motherboard, or both NAS4Free and XBMC on same machine?.
The Sapphire motherboard you mentioned, is a great mobo, but seems to be discontinued, I didnt find info of its price anywhere on the web

[lindsay]

Having a Asus F2A55-M, and could have used a board based on FM1, but want to install smoothwall on that.
Why is because it has 3 PCI so i have internet+3VLAN (PCI raiser in a rack).

Anyway the board i use is fast enough
The main purpose was to use a sabbertooth, but will use that for other purpose when i get som money to use

[MyLastWord]

What about this MB ASUS C60M1-I, with dual 1GHz cores (and 6 SATAIII ports doesn't hurt, no USB3 though).