If you are searching for a motherboard to support a host virtual machine then the Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R has to be considered. This motherboard costs $279.00 USD.
Now what is so good about this motherboard? We want the chance to install plenty of fast memory into a virtual host machine and this motherboard has 6 DDR3 DIMM sockets supporting dual channel memory architecture. That means I can install a total of 24GB of memory into this motherboard. With 4GB modules recently falling to as low as $75 per module, I can spend $450 and fill this board with the full 24GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory!
The motherboard also supports Intel Core i7 processors that use the LGA1366 package. This means I can install a quad core 3.2GHz CPU easily into this motherboard which will be well utilized by the virtual machine environment.
Another aspect of this motherboard that I think deserves mentioning is the use of the Marvell 9128 chip. This means I can install two SATA3 hard drives into a RAID1 configuration. So I get some form of redundancy with mirroring of the two large drives (1TB or 2TB) and I get access speeds twice that of the previously common Sata2 drives.
The board also supports up to 6 USB ports, although 2 are using USB 3.0, 1 1GB network socket (and two would be better), 2 eSATA connectors and on-board audio (not that you would want to use that in a virtual machine) and the usual PS/2 connections for mouse and keyboard if you wish to use those instead of USBs.
If I was looking for a cheap setup for testing and running virtual machines, I would certainly look at making this motherboard the basis for my configuration. On the other hand, if you had two of these machines configured, you could create a high availability network for a real business environment and for such cheap replacement copies keep spare of each major component as a backup in case of failure!
Trevor has been writing articles for websites for several years now. Not only does this author specialize in home handyman tips, information technology and certifications, you can also check out his latest website over at http://www.nursinghomechoice.info which helps people find the best nursing home care for those interested in nursing homes and aged care facilities.
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