SUPERMICRO MBD-X8DA3-O Extended ATX Server Motherboard

Cons: Will not work with 3ware RAID cards apparently. I've tried it with a brand new 3ware 9750-8i, as well as with an older 3ware 9650-8LPML that has been working in another computer just fine for the last year. In both cases, the mobo recognizes the card, the 3ware BIOS posts, you can create/delete arrays or change settings on the card, but once you exit and go back to the boot (or if you never enter the 3ware BIOS and just let it post), the system will freeze, even when there are no drives attached to the RAID card. Without the RAID card installed the system works just fine.

Pros: Plenty of expansion slots, lots of I/O ports, BIOS is pretty customizable

Cons: Cannot use LSI SAS Megaraid with either Intel or Adaptec RAID built into the board. External cards do the same thing. You turn on Intel/Adaptec and the LSI disappears. Supermicro support will respond, just be willing to wait 4 or more days for an anwer.

Pros: Stable, cool, plenty of slots. Mixing SAS and SATA drives on the SAS is great. Runs Windows 7 without a problem.

Cons: Only has 6 sata ports: 2 optical + 4 HD max.BIOS driver managmnt is confusing. Can not diferentiate between sata HDs and add on controll cards (add on card are not shown at all customer service has no solutions and blames it on the card, but I tried 2 different manufs)Did not work with SIIG sata controll card, bios does not seem to show it.Did work with SIIG ultra ide 133 card for HD's only in win 7, but not for DVD or CD drive.Decided to give up on controll cards so I just upgraded all the HDs and DVDs to SATA.The front panel audio connectors does not work, so I decided to buy a regular PCI creative gaming sound card since ther is no PCI-E 1x slot for better sound cards.Customer service does not respond Emails, and over the phone they are not too knowledgable.Over all I would not buy another supermicro, I would by an ASUS which I had no problem like that before.Also the chipset fan will probably fail over time, too bad they did not make a better cooling solution forit

Pros: Stable, easy to build, fits well in my Silversonte case.Board is fine with windows 7. Boot speed is acceptable for a server board.High def sound is very nice too bad that the front auido connector is deffective.

Cons: Board layout wise, the 1394a pinouts are in a shoddy place behind the second pci-e 16x slot. Otherwise, physically fine.I hate to have to give this board a less than five star rating since Supermicro generally makes some great stuff, but I had a rough experience with this one.Board posts slow, although no slower than the other Intel 5500/5520 boards it seems. Would occasionally not boot into a selected hard drive after post along with always detecting one less dimm of ram with six installed Patriot 1333Mhz ECC Registered N82E16820220394. THIS RAM IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH THIS BOARD, but it's hard to find compatible ram since Supermicro has only a dozen or so tested.I contacted Supermicro support, who told me to reflash the BIOS from version 1.0b to 1.0c, generally a risky process in my experience. After a seemingly successful flash to 1.0c using a USB flash drive, the CMOS wouldn't save changed settings leading to a "CMOS bad checksum" error on every boot. <continued bel

Pros: On board 5.1 sound, dual processor, offset (as opposed to parallel) socket configuration for better cooling. EATX standard, all of the nine standard EATX screw holes lined up correctly using a Cooler Master ATCS 840 case. Intel 5520 chipset. PCI slots. Very well featured dual processor workstation board.

Cons: Be careful about what EATX case you get: at first I tried using an old workstation case, which wound up having just a slight incompatibility with the dimensions of the mobo (it was very slight, so they both probably *conform* to the eatx spec). The other thing is to be aware of the 5500 chipset feature is new and requires two 8 pin CPU connectors. Many EPS power units (that conform to the EPS standards the mobo requires) come with one 4 pin CPU cable and one 8 pin CPU cable. I'm not running into any problems using a 4 pin to 8 pin adapter for the second 8 pin connection. Just make sure that your PSU is EPS compliant and has enough current for 2 CPU connectors. The only gripes directed towards the board itself is that with all the expandability it provides, I would have liked some more SATA connections (especially since there's no PATA interface). It would have also been nice to have a few more options in the BIOS (especially for tailoring case and CPU fans).

Pros: While it's true what others say about a long boot time, once it's up and running, it seems to keep up with my dual x5560s. Seems flexible enough for any raid configuration as well. I currently don't have SAS drives, but figured it wouldn't hurt to have the controller just in case. I am running in SATA raid: keeping two 500GB Samsungs as RAID 0 for my system disc, two 1TB Samsung drives as RAID 1 for backup, and one 1TB WD drive for general usage. Setting up Windows with such a setup wound up being very simple (unlike some other RAID configurations I've had in the past).I've had my system build up for over a week now. Right now I'm using stock Intel CPU fans, and when I first was setting up the computer, it literally sounded like a jet airplane. You can set it to "server, workstation, or silent" modes. I'm not noticing any difference in temp, so for now I'm keeping it at silent mode (and will keep it at workstation when I get better CPU fans).