Motherboard recomendations/advice

[jondecker76]

I've decided to get a new motherboard, as my M2NPV-VM has been giving me fits with network drops, raid crashes, lockups, etc. I have spend a lot of time looking through the wiki and I also wanted to get experiences and opinions on some of the boards I'm looking at - as well as suggestions of other boards.

To keep things as cheap as possible, the folowing criteria is what I'm aiming for:
-As much as possible on-board both to keep cost down and keep expansion slots free (onboard video, audio,lan,etc)
-I would like 6 SATA ports. In the past, 4 ports has limited my on-board software RAID to about 2GB as Raid5. I would like to grow this, as well as have a hot spare.
-Many PCI slots. I would like more than 2 PCI slots - its just so limiting
-Socket AM2 so I can re-use my BE-2400 processor
-ATX and MicroATX form factors are fine - i have plenty of room

Here are the boards I am looking at:
Asus M2N-SLI Deluxe
Pros:

• 6 SATA Ports
• 3 PCI slots
• Dual on-board gigabit
• Digital Audio Out
• Has been reported as stable with LinuxMCE

Cons:

• No onboard video (though this is somewhat negated by the dual gigabit lan and plenty of expansion slots)
• Reports of ASCPI issues in the wiki (but others report not having the issues)
• Asus product (after my M2NPV-VM experience, i'm not sure if I want another ASUS product)

Abit A-N78HD
Pros:

• 6 SATA ports
• Onboard Gigabit Lan
• Onboard Geforce 8200[\li]
  

Cons:

• Untested with LinuxMCE
• 2 PCI Slots
• Appears to have no optical audio header
• Unsure about onboard Geforce 8200 with LMCE

Abit AN78GS
Pros:

• 6 SATA Ports
• 3 PCI SLots
• Onboard Geforce 8200
• Onboard gigabit lan

Cons:

• Untested with LMCE
• Unsure if it has optical audio header. I see it has a coax though...
• Unsure about stability/performance of onboard geforce 8200 with LMCE

Also - As I've never changed out a motherboard under LMCE - will it require a full reinstall, our should the hardware changes detect automatically?

Thanks for any help tips and advice

[jondecker76]

Couldn't wait any longer. Just ordered the Asus m2N-SLI Deluxe and an NVidia 7300 256MB 128 bit graphics card to replace my failing motherboard. I'll have to do a writeup when I install it this weekend.

[jondecker76]

its here and very nicely built. I'm going to wait to switch it out though - I got the old one somewhat straightened out. I think next weekend I'll have a go at swapping out the boards.

[colinjones]

Are we saying then the m2n-sli delux is working well for Jon, but the m2n-sli plus is a different board and caused Dave lots of problems?