IBM Computer, Laptops and Servers

poor port layout, Not enough USB ports, not enough fan headers, BIOS sucks for overclocking and memory settings

Other Thoughts: I would go with an Abit or Asus next time.

• Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Model KVR667D2E5/1G - Retail
• Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Model KVR667D2E5/1G - Retail
• $21.99

Pros: DOTEL 6750 FSB 1600 W/667 4gb lat5 tough....lol stock air! Board is low lat over others sooooo cool....650w PSU....not a wisper of a prob! CAKE! Bought everything before greed set in....lol as usual New Egg A++! ASUS Board A++

Cons: one IO on board oh well

Other Thoughts: pci-x for dub slot cards IO pci optical etc etc. snd-MAX HD nice good FSB for 8x 6750 does fine on the P5WDG2 WS 90 degree sata connectors in box. wire ties etc etc. nice Antec 900 HD2900 MOD JBL 4430's WS or gaming I like both. Come get some... recession will drop prices....soon lol

Pros: sweet

Cons: dead

Other Thoughts: diedd 10m in

Pros: Great workstation 1333 FSB yes 1333 45nm able 8gb ram limit 256, 512, 1gb, 2gb, unbuffered ECC and non-ECC DDR2 Dimms. DDR800 DDR667 DDR533

Cons: could have made breakfast 4 me..lol

Other Thoughts: If you want a great workstation try this unit Due to chipset limitation DDR2-667 w/CL=4 will be downgraded to run @ DDR2-533 Due to chipset limitation DDR2-533 w/CL=3 will be downgraded to run @ DDR2-400 must change for lower latency manually. will not support 128mb chips or double sided X16's some old-verson DR-667 Dimms may not match intels on-die termination (ODT) requirement and will downgrade to run @ DDR-533 contact your vendor check ODT value. visit ASUS web for OVL ram. PCI and PCI-X cards can generally be intermixed on a PCI-X bus, but the speed will be limited to the speed of the slowest card. For example, a PCI 2.3 device running at 32 bits and 66 MHz on a PCI-X 133-MHz bus will limit the total throughput of the bus to 266 MB/s. To get around this limitation and the voltage compatibility issue, many motherboards have separate PCI-X channels that can be dedicated to different PCI hardware families if needed, allowing for better backward compatibility while maintaining highe

Pros: The biggest pro by far are the expansion slots. You get a total of 24 PCI Express lanes, 16 from the Northbridge and 8 from the IDT PCI Express Switch. Gives you any combination of video cards, RAID cards, server class network cards, etc etc. Both onboard NICs run off the PCI-E bus, not PCI. Runs solid and stable.

Cons: Chipset runs a little hot. Not enough to be concerned with as long as you have decent airflow. Board layout could use some work. Depending on the case, you might have a hard time getting front panel cables to reach. Somewhat short on USB ports. A firewire port on the IO block would be nice, minor con though. It does include an e-sata port and a firewire is available on a bracket.

Other Thoughts: Picked one up at a local shop six months ago. Amazing overall board. Been running solid non-stop. Would like to add that condescending wannabe experts do buy a $280 975X based sever board for overclocking instead of spending $100 less on a desktop 975x board that overclocks, call PCI Express x16(8) slots ""GA slots"" because they simply don't know there's other things besides graphics adapters that run on PCI Express, buy a floppy drive instead of putting drivers on a USB thumb drive, and refer to people as rookies to make themselves feel better about never seeing the sun. Ignore them, they're virtually useless.

Pros: Awesome. 4 GA slots, 975 NB, ICH7R SB. OC 130% EASILY. NB temp in 30s under load. No promblems at FSB=266 and beyond(1066+ Memory Transactions/s)

Cons: Not x38 chipset or ICH9R. GA slots are a bit close together. Who uses 4 GAs, what with 2 Dual DVI ports on most GAs today Lack of PCI slots. Can't water cool NB easily becuase of heat pipe. The RAID driver thing is kind of a pain. Had to go to Best Buy to pick up a ten dollar floppy drive. I have had pretty good luck with ASUS support, but that website sure is a dog sometimes. It has been that way for last two years or more. You would think they would fix that by now, and don't get me started about bad Englrisch.

Other Thoughts: Rookie says, ""no 2 x PCEx16"" - Duh! 975 chipset only supports 2x PCIx8. Rookie says, ""Raptors hang on reboot"" - Mine didn't. You have those chipset drivers loaded right Also, never try Partition Magic with Vista. Rookie says, ""My First System Build."" - Nuf said. Rookie says, ""Performance is Marginal"" - high on crack. OC parms are vast and plentiful. Totally stable E6600 at 130% and temps at 46C/40C under Prime95 load on air cooling. And about LAN drivers and running hot...I am just not buying it. Sounds like rookies to me. This board is great. Now...on to the x38 (which does have 2x PCIx16)...which probably DOES need some BIOS updates

Pros: Board worked flawlessly out of the box. The four PCIe slots are particularly useful if you want lots of storage or lots of graphics. Also has four memory slots for up to 8 GByte RAM. The 975X chip set is particularly fast.. I built another system using an ASUS board with the P965 chip set and the same processor (E6600) and the same memory and this system runs MUCH faster. Video encoding runs 30% faster with this board than with the ASUS P5B Deluxe.

Cons: Some of the motherboard Internal sound and USB connections are very close to the last PCI slot and near the back of the board. My cables to connect the external case ports to the motherboard were not long enough without blocking the last PCI slot as a result. Board works great. The layout for the board could be better.

Other Thoughts: I'm using this board in a 6 Terabyte video server with 3ware RAID cards in the PCIe slots. Am actually using the PCI slot for video graphics to save the PCI e slots for more RAID connections.

Microsoft Windows Server Standard 2008 32Bit/x64 English 1pk DSP OEI DVD 1-4CPU 5 Clt w/Hyper V - OEM

ASUS M2N-LR AM2 NVIDIA nForce Professional 3600 ATX Server Motherboard - Retail

Pros: The combination of PCI-X and PCI Expresss slots made this mobo a great choice for our company. We needed true hardware RAID (3Ware 9550SXU) with a decent graphics card and this was one of the only boards with both slots. This machine turned out to be a monster. With a 2.8 ghz dual core Opteron, RAID 10 with 4 10, 000 rpm Sata Raptors and 8 gigs of DDR2 800 ram it has a lot of resources and makes very good use of them. Using Iozone to benchmark the RAID array write speeds average above 750, 000 KB/s with the highs a little in excess of 940, 000 KB/s. Read speeds are all above 1.7 GB/s, with the highs above 2.5 GB/s. It makes a great database server. It only took 5 minutes to unpack, install, and configure the 690 software packages downloaded in the Debian netinstall installation.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I would highly recommend this mobo. It's worth the money if you need hardware RAID.

Pros: Stable, fast.

Cons: Ran fine for Windows Server 2003, but after upgrading to Windows Server 2008 -- for the intent of using the new virtualization features -- I was disappointed that this motherboard is incompatible, even after flashing the BIOS to latest version (v.502).

Pros: Easy to configure, ASUS straight forward BIOS and RAID setup, all needed features in a basic server, common memory and processors for a good quality/price build. I haven't found any bad ports of any kind.

Cons: None technically so far. The front panel connectors are placed in the lower left corner of the board so in some cases this may be a stretch. This wasn't a problem for me though in any of my builds.

Other Thoughts: I have used this board in a few server builds in the last month or so. BIOS and RAID setup is easy as with any ASUS board, and RAID 1 and 5 have both been stable. Using the AM2 and DDR2 makes both components common and makes a goor product for the price. I haven't done anything with hot-swap cpability, so I can't comment on that.

ASUS ASUS L1N64-SLI WS Dual L(1207FX) NVIDIA nForce 680a SLI MCP SSI CEB AMD Motherboard - Retail Will be replaced by L1N64-SLI WS/B It also includes dual gigabit Ethernet ports, 7.1 channel onboard sound, and 12 SATA ports. With those 12 ports, by adding multiple hard drives to the system, this versatile card supports RAID 0, 1, 0+1, 5, and JBOD. For growing your virtual empire, it offers multiple slots, including four x16 (which can be used for graphics cards), and one x1 PCIe slots, plus an additional PCI slot. With all this heat-producing operation going on, ASUS keeps you cool with huge copper heatsinks and heatpipes for silent, efficient cooling. For any gamer that wants to build an extremely powerful system, the Asus L1N64-SLI WS is a perfect base for your weapons systems.

Pros: Once I got third-party cpu fans, it runs great, cool and quiet. It is rock solid and has had uptime for months without a single problem. It runs linux well, have had SUSE and Ubuntu on the box and it runs visualization fast and flawlessly. Lots of USB and SATA ports. Works well with a well cooled case (recommend one with a side fan as well as front and back.

Cons: None so far.

Other Thoughts: I would buy this board again and again. Highly recommended.

Before buying...

Pros: Bought this motherboard in March of 2007. Overall satisified with the performance and features as well as the potential of the motherboard. Its crammed with tons of features for gamers on of the more notable ones is the 4 PCI express card slots and the obvious advantage of being able to put in either 2 Barcelona quad cores (for servers) or the Phenom FX quad cores(for gamers/desktop users) which comes out on F (1207) socket in 2008. Oh and the 7.1 built in audio is a nice addon.

Cons: The size is an inevitable con. You give some to get some in this case and its a good trade off for all the features but expect to get a full size case (reccomend cooler master stacker)and possibly a larger power supply especially if your considering getting 8800s. Make sure it has both a 4 pin and a 24 pin connector. On a side note: if you do plan to get a PSU get a modular one! Your case will be a little tight with the motherboard with the video cards last thing you need is having tons of power cords dangling everywhere(even with a full size case), so to avoid cable management and bad air flow go modular.

Other Thoughts: Sound was also an issue with this motherboard, the 2 CPUs come with fans that are incredibly loud (air conditioner loud) which is annoying for extended use such as gaming or web surfing. If your looking for aftermarkets there arent many compatible with F-socket but I found out that F-socket 1207 which is completely different from the original F-socket is compatible with AM2 socket because the processors are based off of the FX-62 Windsor. Confirmed this by buying 2 Zalman CNPS9500 cpu coolers and they work just fine (Now the computer is near silent). Overall I woul highly reccomend this motherboard, F socket and AM2 socket are the future sockets of AMD and this motherboard was built for both performance and potential.

Pros: when working its a nice board that accepts all kinds of goodies good memory speed, nice processors and other such things

Cons: ASUS RMA... if you have any problems with the board expect at least 2 weeks down time. they say 10 business days but i am currently on 15 business days and still waiting for my RMA to be filled... they don't have an 800 number either.

Other Thoughts: asus needs to fix their RMA or they are going to loose a lot of business. People don't want to buy products from companies that they have to fight with to use a warranty... The consumer also has to pay for one way shipping.

Asus RMA sucks -2 Months downtime

Pros: good while it lasted

Cons: 6 months having this board it failed. After a month of ruling every other component out, it was decided the MoBo was bad. Unfortunatley, I had to go through Asus RMA (not Newegg). That is when hell on earth began. Asus support RMA and shipping Dept sucks!!! I was lied to 2 times as far when it would ship. They say it will ship in 10 days, @11 days told it will ship in 2 days. After them having my MoBo for 3 weeks they finaly sent a ""replacement"" board (not new...don't be fooled) It took a week to get via ground. The Mobo was stuffed into a undersized box with virtually no padding, every capicitor was bent over. And worse yet the pins in the socket were bent. On the 2nd cpu socket there was notable excess thermal grease from previous install, and dust prevelant. At this point I have to ship this hunk of s^!t back and wait for a ""new"" one. They say they will over night..yeah right!

Other Thoughts: Make sure it's your MobO thats bad Because you WILL get a nutted on board back in return. It cost me $20 to send it to them, and I have about $25 in long distance charges ( yeah they dont have a toll free #) and endless hours of aggravation. I have a asus products in my box o'plenty....I from now on will never buy Asus again!!!!!

Pros: Has everything you need. Really. I am impressed with all the doodads and options and how future proof the board is. It keeps cool too.

Cons: Get a full tower. Tis a monster board.

Other Thoughts: The fans are a tad noisy. Only option for Quad FX and I have nooo idea if this socket will ever get a quad core. I hope so.

Max LAN Speed Rear Panel Ports PS/2 LPT USB eSATA S/PDIF Out Audio Ports Onboard USB Onboard 1394 Physical Spec Form Factor Dimensions Windows Vista Features Power Pin Packaging Package Contents Manufacturer Warranty Parts Labor Introduction Highlights Supports AMD Dual Socket L Athlon 64 FX CPU The L1N64-SLI WS supports AMD Dual Socket L (Socket 1207FX) Athlon 64 FX processors which are based on the 64-bit AMD architecture. It features a 2000 MT/s HyperTransport Bus and dual-channel unbuffered DDR2 800 memory support with dual-core technology for stunning multitasking performance. NVIDIA nForce 680a SLI Chipset The NVIDIA nForce 680a SLI chipset supports the NVIDIA Scalable Link Interface (SLI) technology that allows two graphics processing units (GPUs) in a single system. Designed for enthusiast gamers, extreme overclocking capabilities and the ultimate gaming performance with SLI technology support, there no doubt this is one of the fastest platforms in the world today. 13 SATA 3Gb/s Connectors with RAID The ASUS L1N64-SLI WS features 12 internal SATA 3Gb/s connectors and an external SATA 3Gb/s port to satisfy even the most storage-hungry demands. Support RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5 and RAID 0+1 for better performance and data security. Dual Gigabit LAN The integrated dual Gigabit LAN design allows a PC to serve as a network gateway for managing traffic between two separate networks. Dual Gigabit LAN means rapid data transfers from WAN to LAN without any added arbitration or latency. S/PDIF Out Interface S/PDIF allows connections to today's hottest digital audio devices without signal loss. Connect S/PDIF out to an AC-3 decoder for full-on theater quality digital sound. IEEE 1394a Support IEEE 1394 is a widely used standard interface between personal computers and digital AV equipment. With IEEE 1394a you can easily connect digital devices such as a digital camcorder to the IEEE 1394a port provided on this motherboard for up to 400Mbps data transfer speeds.

Pros: This is a grate board outside of a few bio's tweak e's and the silly VCore drop deal that is not all that big a problem as far as I see it. It has the deluxe 8 phase power to the cpu set up that OC's cooler with less voltage. If looking for a good bio's try the 0503. 6/26/2006 it's the only bio's that docent have the memory hole prob you can run as much ram as you want with out having to pull ram out just to get the board to post. So you can reset the memory hole option.

Cons: only Con is if you use the 0503 bio's I mentioned you might have to deal with the misreporting eide optical device. But that has never caused me a prob that I couldest load any OS or didn't show corrected after loading the OS. A minor annoyance for a few min and it's over. And that bio's ver 0503 never has you pulling that extra ram out just to post and if you have ever used a newer bio's ver with Memory Hole option. If they had just defaulted that option to ON it would never had been a prob. But defaulting to OFF you cant post with over 2Gig on it.

Other Thoughts: I had to RMA this one from asus 1month and 1week after purchase. And they sent me back a new board with the above bio's and it's the best Ive used so far. Im running 6Gig of ram on a quad and dont have to take any out just because of bio's reset, on this board it's almost painless with the 0503 bio's.

Pros: 150.00 price tag, external sata slots, built-in wi/fi.

Cons: Won't recognize IDE devices whatsoever. Yes, even w/ a BIOS upgrade. Can't boot from CD/DVD to install OS.

Other Thoughts: ASUS tech support said IDE devices are supported and should be viewable via the F8 boot menu, but that no menus existed in the BIOS setup. TWO different BOARDS: IDE DEVICES RECOGNIZED = 0.

Pros: its a good board, at a good value with built in wifi... which is what i needed, to use it as a media center PC. board runs cool, my e4400 at 2.6ghz runs at 24c all day long on the stock cooler.

Cons: the vcore options in bios could be a little better, dont like the layout.

Other Thoughts: to the dumb guy who was complaining about the board not being able to unlock the multipliers UPWARDS... NEWS FLASH BUDDY, but intel locks that on the chip. they are IMPOSSIBLE to unlock. if you want unlocked upwards multiplier, you need to buy the extreme editions for near a grand. dont diss this board based on YOUR ignorance. its a solid board, and has worked for a while.

BIOSTAR K8M800 Micro AM2 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

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BIOSTAR K8M800 Micro AM2 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail BIOSTAR K8M800 Micro AM2 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail BIOSTAR K8M800 Micro AM2 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail BIOSTAR K8M800 Micro AM2 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail BIOSTAR K8M800 Micro AM2 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail BIOSTAR K8M800 Micro AM2 Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail

• Rosewill R363-M-BK Micro ATX Black Ultra High Gloss Finished Computer Case with 400W ATX 2.2 12V Power Supply - Retail
• Rosewill R363-M-BK Micro ATX Black Ultra High Gloss Finished Computer Case with 400W ATX 2.2 12V Power Supply - Retail
• $69.99

Pros: Very solid boards. This is my third Biostar and I've never had a stability problem. I'm currently running a AMD LE-1640 AM2 overclocked to 3.01 ghz with 2gb Corsair with Zero issues. I've got two SATA drives, a WD Raptor for booting and a 500gb WD for storage. Both have run flawlessly on this board and my last Biostar. I can see this board being excellent for a Media Center if you don't mind an AGP video card. There is a Sapphire 3850 AGP that has just come out.

Cons: Cannot set CAS Latency in the bios. This means that you can't set any timings at all as using the Manual setting will set CAS Latency to some ""unknown"" value. If you wish to Manually set memory timings like I did I would stay away. I was able to use the RM Memory Analyzer Timings.exe to manually set all timings at start-up with the exception of Cas Latency(cannot be set from windows.)

Other Thoughts: Customer service is not bad for a $50 board. When I complained about the CAS Latency they were responsive but not much help. For anyone with the same question here is Biostar's repsonse. ""To set such increased speed for the latency, our standards are unable to handle such speed. That is why the timings are mainly around the standard levels. So we designed T-series models that can support increased performance, otherwise the motherboard will not run stable. Sorry, we cannot help, but for such increased timing on the memory (overclocking, I can only suggest using T-series models). ""

Functional, plain, lacking in extras...

Pros: It works. There are lots of BIOS options to tinker around with. Small Micro ATX factor.

Cons: Big problem... the thermal diode sensor procudes inaccurate readings (says my Athlon 64 X2 is operating at 70 C, which is not true ). Max memory speed is only DDR 667, when the via chipset it is based on supports 800. With the type of AGP cards people are using, it is always going to take up 1 PCI slot. Therefore, there is only 1 available for use, since there are 2 total. Integrated ethernet is only 100 Mbps, instead of 1000. No extra hardware goodies included, and the manual is on the driver CD. Doesn't look very pretty either.

Other Thoughts: This board might be good if you need to stick with an AGP card. But there are better boards that also support AGP.

Pros: AGP slot, cheap

Cons: Everything else... I ordered one and it kept showing garbled video with my video card (ATI Radeon 9600 256M DDR), so I ordered a new card (ATI Sapphire X1650 512MB DDR2) thinking that was the issue--same problem. I just got a replacement for the first motherboard in the mail and I'm having the same problem with both cards!

Other Thoughts: This motherboard is junk! Buy MSI instead!

BIOSTAR BIOSTAR GF7050V-M7 LGA 775 NVIDIA GeForce 7050 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail Powered by NVIDIA Graphics

Pros: It worked out of the box. I took the previous advice and skipped the packaged drives and got the latest from the website. My set up. 2gb Corsair DDR2 800, E8500 C2D, @233mhz, Gigabyte Radeon 3870, Win XP professional, and 120GB HD.

Cons: The BIOS Performance Booster Zone is anything but intuitive. Motherboard front side bus speed is multiplied by 4. 200mhz is listed as 800mhz. so if you want 233mhz you need to input 932mhz for FSB. Don't know why they do this Can't get the processor to 266mhz fsb.

Other Thoughts: Can't find any good forums on this Biostar MB or this BIOS. Need suggestions on getting to 266mhz. Tried Extra Voltage on the Processor and North bridge. it did not help. I may try down clocing the memory to 533mhz see if that works. Also, the myrebate site for the rebate along with the requirements are a joke.

Pros: This board is capable of more than you would expect. If you pick the right parts to put with it you can make a VERY powerful machine. It'll handle 800 to 1333 FSB, which is nearly any LGA775 CPU, and can handle DDR2 800, but you have to go into BIOs and turn the frequency up from 667. Good for a budget to mid-range gaming board.

Cons: None of the drivers that ship with this sucker work. NONE. Thankfully you can download the more important ones (Video) online, and if you use a PCI-E card that doesn't cover the PCI slots, you can put in a PCI LAN and Audio card.

Other Thoughts: It would have been wonderful had the drivers that shipped with the board worked. the LAN problem is a 25-35 dollar fix, and a Gigabit LAN PCI-E 1x card is pretty cheap. Also got an EVGA Nvidia 8600 GTX and a Creative Soundblaster on it. CPU is a P4 Cedar Mill at 3.9 GHz on stock cooling

Pros: this board is great it can handle anything talk about speed it pretty fast and well worth the price i'll reconmend it to anyone biostar make the best boards

Cons: one ide connector which is a small problem but i'd can handle it by installing a ide card

Newegg, Newegg.com, TYAN S2925G2NR AM2 NVIDIA nForce Professional 3400 ATX Server Motherboard - Retail

Pros: A nice basic server board with support for ECC RAM. Especially useful for building a low-power server. The NVidia MCP55 chipset on this board is supported well by Linux. This board also has a hardware monitoring chip which is supported by the dme1737 module included in Linux 2.6.23.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I installed an AMD Opteron 1210 HE and 8 GB (4 x 2 GB) of ECC RAM. It's not a screamer, but the entire system (including a pair of hard drives) only consumes about 80 watts most of the time, so it's easy to keep quiet and cool.

An insanely tight motherboard for the price

Pros: Where to begin. First of all, I hate it when motherboards are picky with memory. This one isn't. Got a set of Crucial 2x2 sticks for total 4gig of RAM. Some people commented the raid was hard to setup. I beg to differ. Went to the website, downloaded the driver (which is the same driver for a wide variety of raid controllers Tyan offer), and loaded up fine. Windows installed in a snap. This motherboard is what I want, not picky, rock solid, latest stable BIOS out of the box, very fast, and high quality. A+ all the way to Tyan.

Cons: When installing in the Sonata 3, a capacitor on the upper right corner of the board prevents you from putting 5.25 drives in the bottom slot, but that's what the other slots are for ;). Also I guess i neglected to notice there's no onboard audio on this, so that was a bummer, but I could care less since I'm building this as a server.

Other Thoughts: This board is tight, it's what this old school system builder wanted. No headaches, put it together and fires up the first time. Within 30 minutes of building, I was into W2k3 x64 server and on my way.

Pros: Works like it is supposed to.

Cons: Can't think of anything.

Other Thoughts: You idiots that can't get the RAID working is because... well, you are idiots. If all fails, RTM. You will need a floppy dirve, USB works well, a floppy disk and the Tyan CD. However, check the Tyan site for the latest drivers. Checking for the latest drivers online is not unique to MBO's. Whatever you are installing, go find the latest driver. Umm, something called the Internet So, you copy the RAID drivers to the floppy, setup the floppy drive on the install machine, and on your first boot do a F10 to create the RAID definition. Afterwards, what F6 when Windows is starting to install and what, select the RAID drivers off of the floppy Wow, this is really hard. I have been setting up RAID machines since 2000 and the steps necessary to do this is the same for every MBO I have bought.

Pros: Rock-solid! I Downloaded the excellent, clearly written PDF manual from mfg website for full details before buying. Supports TWO Intel Xeon 64-bit quad-core or dual-core processors at a front side bus speed of 1333/1066/667 MHz. 5000P chipset. Sockets for eight DDR2 FBD 667/533 memory modules. Made for Clovertown Xeons such as the E5345. These are 64 bit NetBurst microarchitecture, yet remain compatible with 32-bit based software. This is an excellent server motherboard, offering many useful options.

Cons: No cons. Make sure your case can handle EATX size motherboard. This motherboard requires I used an Antec TITAN650, which has exactly the right PowerSupply to handle this motherboard, TWO Xeon E5345 CPU's, IDE DVD burner, two WD1500ADFD 150GB SATA Raptors (C: Mirror RAID), and two 500GB 7200 rpm SATA Seagate drives. I still have two SATA drive connections available for future expansion. Bought 4 KVR667D2D4F5/2G memory for a total of 8 GB of dual-channel memory, Memory of this kind runs hotter than regular memory. Memory came with decent heat spreaders. I added two Vantec 92mm fans in front of the SATA drive cage, and drives run cool. Motherboard has seven 4 pin fan connectors that can also be used with two and three pin fans. I connected the Antec PowerSupply small fan speed connector up to MB FAN1 so software can monitor PS fan speed. I set the MB fan control mode to 4 pin so the CPU cooler would work best using PWM. The stock CPU heatsink/fan works just fine.

Other Thoughts: Includes printed manual, EATX MB, Cables: IDE, floppy, 2-Port USB, COMport, 4 SATA. i/O Shield, CD w/drivers. Antec includes the required heatsink mounting plate for two Xeons. Standard LED/switch/panel connections can all be made to motherboard without any problems, but some of the motherboards EXTRA functions such as overheat indicators are not supported by the Antec case. Not a problem. I am VERY pleased with the quality and function of the X7DBE-X-O motherboard and will buy another one in a few days.

Incredible Board

Pros: This board is top quality. Apart from some unrelated issues due to using an add-in RAID controller, it is wonderful. It booted right up and is quite fast. The board has a plethora of options and is rock solid.

Cons: This is one very larg monebaggasse