Intel S3420GPV ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1156 Intel 3420 DDR3 1333

Pros: Solid and reliable, this board has been running my home server for about a year.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: I am not using the onboard controller except for the boot disk (60GB intel SSD).

I have been running this for about a year. Previously with WHS V1, now with Win8 for host OS duties and Server 2K12 in hyper-v for backups. This has been flawless to-date. As it is behind a UPS I have had 100% uptime to-date.

I'm running an Areca 1230 raid controller with five 2TB disks as RAID 5 configured as four 2TB volumes that are aggregated in Win8 via Storage Spaces as a simple pool. Perf in the configuration is outstanding.

This server also hosts Plex and with a I3-530 handles trans-coding fine.

Pros: Have been folding on this board for >12 months non-stop and it has had no issues whatsoever - it's been rock solid and manages its duties as a fileserver and web server as well as folding without issue.

Cons: None as far as I've seen.

Other Thoughts: It's a slightly outdated board now but I don't foresee us upgrading in the near future as our CPU/motherboard combination is more than adequate for our needs.

Pros: Works.
Cheap.
Fast enough.
Reasonable power draw. Idle and serving files it draws about 85w total.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: Running an Areca RAID card in here. No problems. I3 CPU and WHS V1 PP3. Dunno if the on-board RAID is any good, not using it.

This rig can take 1080p MKV and transcode for streaming via Plex Media Server with no problems.

Pros: It hasn't burnt down my business.

Cons: The RAID controller is a joke. I have tried two sets of HD's at this point. Both WD 150Gb Raptors and Samsung Spinpoints F3Rs. Both are enterprise level drives and fully capable of being Raided. However the Raid would constantly drop drives out of the RAID 5, marking them as bad. When this happened, it locked the whole system instead of acting like a normal RAID 5 and keeping on chugging. This happened over the course of 3 months and crashed pretty much every night. Twice it crashed two drives and I had to rebuild from backups. I bought Intel and paid extra to try to get Stability not the extras that others usually get. And I got burned and look like an moron in front of boss and coworkers I support.

Other resolutions were tried as well. Drivers/Bios etc..

Other Thoughts: Stay far away.