TYAN S5510GM3NR Micro ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1155 Intel C204 DDR3 1600

Pros: ESXi 5.0 picked up the drivers beautifully for all of the NIC's as well as all of the temp sensors on the board.

DIMM TEMP SENSOR
PCIE TEMP SENSOR
CPU TEMP SENSOR

Board nice and small, layout was convenient. Lots of SATA plugs, although I did not use these

Cons: The primary header for the cases switches and LED's are unmarked. (Use to the super easy gigabyte boards). But the manual lays them out correctly.

Very Slow POST. This through me way off when troubleshooting, can take upwards of a minute to POST with correct hardware the first time. After that it seemed to POST quite quickly.

VERY PICKY ABOUT RAM! I cannot stress this enough. Use
ECC ******UNBUFFERED**** memory.

I was uninformed that there was a difference. I thought ECC was always registered(buffered) memory, not the case.

This also limits you to 16gb total as they do not sell memory of this time in 8gb sticks. We used this:

KVR1333D3E9S/4GHB

Other Thoughts: If you buy the correct memory right off the bat, you will not run into any problems. That and make sure you use a XEON processor, as the i7 is not supported officially. Although it does work.

Here were the parts for our build. ESX is currently screaming:

XEON E3-1230
4x Hitatchi 7K3000 (RAID 10)
TYAN S5510
Adaptec 6805E (Have to build custom iso to include drivers)
Antec Three Hundred Illusion
OCZ ModXStream 600W

Pros: Great features for a mATX server mobo, sandy bridge, intel 82574L NIC's

Cons: Very picky about what PSU will work with it, just like the other reviews have said.

Other Thoughts: Wow...I cant believe that this mobo is so picky about the PSU for it to even post! Does not post (nothing comes on except LED6) with Corsiar TX550M, item# N82E16817139032. I should have bought the Supermicro board X9SCL+-F (basically the same but C202 chipset and a different BMC/iKVM chip, only one x4 PCIe slot). If you can find a PSU that works with this board, I'm sure it would be ok, but I wouldnt chance it.

Pros: Great feature set ... 3 Intel Gig NICs & 4 PCI-e slots. Did get it to work!

Cons: Went through 4 different power supplies before finding one that would allow board to POST. Seems to like OLD (pre Gold type) power supplies. I did not have a unit on their list.

Other Thoughts: Latest firmware (103) seems to be reasonably stable ... with patience can get up & running. Does still have odd behaviour during POST & Boot processes compared to other boards (Supermicro) that I have experience with.

Pros: All 3 onboard NICs are supported by ESXi 5.0. iKVM is a must. Works great with Intel Xeon E3-1230 and supported RAM.

I didn't realize that ESXi could use the NIC that the iKVM was using, at the same time.

Have had zero issues with the board.

Cons: Would have liked to be able to remote power on, but I can live without this.
The manuals/documentation is somewhat lacking.

Other Thoughts: Not sure why people give this board such a bad wrap.
I did a lot of research, and picked CPUs and Memory that were on the TYAN site, listed as compatible.

The only ding, is the EPS12V requirement. I added a converter, and the board works fine with my desktop PC power supply.

Pros: LGA 1155 socket
Built-in iPMI/KVM
Dual Intel gigE LAN ports

Cons: iPMI/KVM only works if the server is on. If the machine is off, you have to physically walk over to the server to turn it on. This defeats the purpose of remote power control. With a Supermicro board, you can remotely turn on the server using iPMI.

Other Thoughts: This is the first Tyan board that I bought. I had been using exclusively Supermicro boards, but thought that I would give Tyan a try. No more. The Tyan BIOS boot sequence is very confusing. Very difficult to find out how to boot from an iSCSI target. Manual is totally useless.

Pros: NEWEGG CUSTOMER SERVICE, as usual.

The eggs are solely for Newegg's customer service. Tyan, you get nothing.

Cons: Contrary to what it claims, the board is INCOMPATIBLE with the "Intel Core i3-2120 Sandy Bridge 3.3GHz 2 x 256KB L2 Cache 3MB L3 Cache LGA 1155 65W Dual- Core Desktop Processor".
What makes me say this? Two boards in the span of a month, neither so much as displayed POST information on the screen. Just got fans spinning and a few blinky lights, no audible beeps even though it has an onboard speaker. For reference, I used the following components in testing this board:

1x N82E16819115077
1x (and sometimes 2x) N82E16820139077

Not a blip or beep to be had. The power supply used is solid (N82E16817371020) because it's now powering a SuperMicro board with the C202 chipset and the same RAM I used to test this glorified clipboard. Tyan's lethargic customer service conclusion: uhh, send it back for a replacement.

Real astute, guys. I'm sure board number THREE would've done the trick. I have a better conclusion: the C204 chipset DOESN'T work with an i3-2120.

Other Thoughts: The Intel CPU I used (N82E16819115077) was not defective because it's currently running in a GIGABYTE GA-H67M-D2-B3 (N82E16813128473) board.

The Kingston RAM I used (N82E16820139077) is also not defective because both DIMMs are currently running in a SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-F-O (N82E16813182251) board.

Tyan <----EPIC FAIL.

Pros: * ESXi - All NICs are recognized, all VM featurs
* iKVM - I have not looked into the Power On over iKVM, but you can reboot. If you have easy access to the server (like me) then this is not a large issue. The access is via the web and I was able to open a console, manage my BIOS and etc.

Cons: * ESXi - The driver for the RAID is not recognized by ESXi. I will admit that I did not try to load the driver and go the extra step though.

Other Thoughts: This is a great motherboard for my purposes as an ESXi server machine.

Pros: The IPMI/KVM does in fact work when the computer is powered off. In terms of ram, just use what they ask for, and you'll be fine. It had great documentation, and temperatures are low. Worked with ESXi under this setup:
e3-1230
2x2GB ECC Unbuffered 1333Mhz ram
1TB Samsung
2TB WD LP
750GB Hitachi Deskstar
380w 80+ Bronze Antec
in win br655

Cons: For some reason, Ubuntu server does not like the motherboard in AHCI mode, but this is a common issue, and could be due to my setup (will update if I get working).

Other Thoughts: The IPMI/KVM is somewhat setup in a weird way. If you want to use the web interface, it will not be available when the computer is off. But, as long as you use a static ip, if you have an open console, it will remain active. So I'm pretty sure that you could send a request to power on the computer without the website

Pros: I purchased this box to be an ESXi 4.1 Whitebox, and it fits the bill perfectly. I went with an E3-1230 Xeon processor, and 16GB of RAM (KVR1333D3E9S/4G). There were absolutely no issues with installing ESXi. I specifically purchased this board because it does VT-x, VT-d and Hyper-threading. Not only that, but unlike a lot of Whitebox motherboards, all three of the On-Board NICs are recognized by ESXi, so you don't have to worry about buying a custom NIC.

Cons: Board Layout could probably be a little better, the RAM slots could be a little further away from the CPU heat sink, and the SATA connections could be positioned better so it's not sitting directly behind the hard drives. I bought a mATX case and I have to make sure I install everything in order, for example I can't install the CPU heat sink until the drives are installed, but these are not really major issues.

Other Thoughts: I'm not sure why this board has got such a bad rap. There are only two reviews so far and they are not very good. Perhaps I got lucky, but I have had no issues with this board that weren't self inflicted (bought the wrong type of RAM originally). ****IMPORTANT**** just a heads up, make sure you buy exactly what the board calls for when it comes to RAM, I tried some non-ECC ram I had laying around and had to buy some server based ram. This board calls for DDR3 Unbuffered ECC RAM, so make sure you get the right stuff, or you will be thinking your board was DOA like I did. I went with (KVR1333D3E9S/4G) found on newegg which is on the manufacturer's website as compatible ram.

Pros: KVM over IP. This is main reason that I bought this over the ASUS 1156 board. Remote mgmt for free vs. an add on for the ASUS.

Cons: Doesn't abide by the EPS12V spec. The FSP Aurum Gold PS that I bought with this board (80 plus Gold) is incompatible. The FSP takes a little longer than other PS to return the PWR_OK signal (within EPS12V spec). The TYAN is not willing to wait that long, and shuts down the PS before it even gets started. A LONG wait from TYAN support after explicitly asking for the max delay it will wait for PWR_OK (ironic I know), and they are getting ready to start the RMA process.

They are going to fix my board, so you probably wan't to hold off a few months on purchasing one of these until the fix makes its way into production.