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At the start of this year, I've planned building a little bit workstation-caliber computer to play with some cpu and memory extensive software (virtualization, linux source code compilation, hackintosh etc). But having on a tight budget, I've found this very nice motherboard as solution to my needs. I bought 6x 4GB PC2 5300 server memory for $15 and two pairs of Xeon cpus, two Xeon L5420 (50W) and two E5450 (80W). Having a 750W power supply readily available, I will have two options to either setup dual Xeon L5420 + high mid-range video card or dual Xeon E5450 + low mid-range video card. As a note to those planning to purchase this motherboard, be sure to update first the bios to version 1.2a before installing any OS. The older bios version do not have the option to change the fan speed to run it quieter. Also, the latest bios fix problem on using some newer video card (but cannot guarantee if the fix is also applicable to the latest versions of video card). Then, tried applying some ideas recently learned in the internet by slic modding the bios to version 2.3. To make this project more interesting, I bought a $9 HP P800 raid controller for the PCIe x8 slot (plus a couple of SAS HDDs on sale) and another old school sound card Audigy 2Zs Platinum Pro for the PCI slot. Fortunately, the unknown computer case brand that I use in my old MSI G41M-P28 desktop also matched well with this motherboard because most of the holes are align with the holes in the SKT-0159L backplate. The lower right hole of the motherboard is indeed not align with the hole in the casing as mentioned by dylanbl312 on the earlier reviews. To prevent the lower right part of the motherboard from touching the case, I remove an unused hex stand-off in the case and put it in the remaining mis-align hole in the motherboard (in reverse position with the thread placed on the motherboard hole using a nut on the top side to secure it). Been very happy with this purchase. I will complete this project this coming weeks (particularly the raid setup) and I hope that everything will still work well.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
Booted great only would run the on board vega graphics, would not see any card I put in, did the research and found it needed a flash up date to the bios in order to boot the graphics card, did that, got it from super micro and now the board will only run mem test and freeze, whats up????cant get into the bios to re flash it. I took battery out, reset bios aka the jumper and still well crap. So now moving on. Will look good as a tile. Moving mem and processors to a full atx board,. Now have a small case and no board. Sad to say the least. The vendor was fine just the end game sucked.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
First, let me say right off the bat this is indeed one of the best value-for-money routes you can go if you are building a PC or a server and you are trying to save as much money as possible. You can have a machine with up to 24GB of RAM, two Xeon e5450s (for a total of 8 CPU cores), both the CPU coolers and the motherboard all for under 150 dollars USD. But building with a board like this isn't your standard run-of-the-mill PC build. There are a bunch of things you will need to look out for including but not limited to: 1. This is an mATX board that takes up 5 PCIe slots. What this means is you will need an ATX case to fit this board 2. Not all the mounting holes on the board lines up in a standard ATX computer case. Only the two holes to the bottom left of the board next to the PCIe slots and the three mounting holes at the top of the board actually lined up with my Rosewill challenger computer case. I had to drill holes to accommodate the unusual mounting holes on this board and even then there are holes that are simply not there on this board at all (like there should be at least two mounting holes running across the right edge of the board but there are none). 3. Good luck finding LGA 771 backplates as they are expensive and raise the motherboard so much that they will not allow you to mount the motherboard in the case. To fix this problem I simply avoided a backplate altogether and zip-tied some LGA 771 CPU coolers on this board. 4. When you install everything, this board takes a VERY VERY long time to pass POST. My board takes roughly 90 seconds just to pass the POST process not even boot into the OS. So if you think your board may be broken because it is not booting up for the first time, go make yourself a sandwich and come back later. The motherboard will have very likely completed POST after this. 5. Fan control on this board is horrible, the fans constantly revv up and revv down for no reason. This problem can be solved by configuring a fan profile in speedfan. 6. I tried three video cards in this computer and only two of them worked. I tried an asus R9 380, another Asus GTX 750 ti and a very old EVGA geforce GTS 250. The Geforce GTS 250 worked out of the box but the Asus R9 380 needed a bios update to the board to work. The GTX 750 ti didn't work at all. My suggestion is to stick with AMD cards if you are planning to put a GPU in this computer as they seem to just work in my experience. Although there are reports about this board working totally fine with the geforce 900 series so that may have just been a strange event of the 750 ti not working. As you can see, there are a ton of hoops you will need to jump through in order to build a computer with a very cheap server board like this. A setup with this board and two Xeon e5450s has about the same CPU performance as an AMD FX-8350. But keep in mind, you would be paying over $120 just for the AMD CPU if you chose to go the AMD FX route instead of uding a server board. An AMD FX setup would cost you around $350 for the mobo+CPU+ram+cooler whereas going with this old server mobo+the CPU(s)+24GB RAM+coolers will only cost you $150. Even after having to go through all these steps I still think this is absolutely worth every penny and you should seriously consider doing this if you are very tight on money and are willing to jump through a few hoops to get what you want.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
It is actually a bit longer than a standard micro atx motherboard and one bottom mounting screw does not match up -not a big deal- . I'm using it in an Antec case with the tall Supermicro fan cooled cpu heatsinks and two X5460 mounted on nocona plates and although it is slow to boot up , it runs very fast afterwards. There are some great deals on ecc ram on eBay so I bought 16gb of Kingston ram for fifty bucks and left two ram slots open. This version does not have an on board audio chip so I disabled the on board VGA and used a Radeon hd 4670 with HDMI output . It makes an extremely fast dual quad workstation that is great for trans-coding or playing fast games and fits in most computer cases and also has dual on board gigabit Ethernet .
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
Came in the mail relatively early, upon install of 2 xeon x5460's it booted right up, memory worked for it, can't complain. No HD audio in the rear, and no connection on board for the chasis, but audio card is easy to manage.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
