Pros: Never had a hickup in the few years I've owned this board. It's on 24/7 and doesn't miss a beat. Running 10 HDD's w/ a dumbed down RAID card in FreeNAS.

Cons: None. At. All.

Other Thoughts: If you are looking for a FreeNAS board that is stable and full of features (IPMI), then get this board.

Pros: DOA

Cons: DOA

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Rajen,

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
You returned the Kingston memory KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G along with our E3C224D2I server board to Newegg for the reason of DOA and non-functional?
Maybe the problem lied to something else installed in your system or the way components were being installed.
Please contact our support when you encounter any problem at william@asrockamerica.com
We will give you guideline of what problem to look for.

Thank you

ASRock Rack Support
Email: http://event.asrock.com/tsd.asp?ln=en

Pros: - onboard USB port
- server grade, supports ECC
- IPMI management
- compact ITX for small NAS build
- Dual Intel NICs
- 6 SATA ports

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: Paired with a Celeron G1840, 8GB of ECC RAM, 3 hard drives inside the LIAN LI PC-Q25B case

Pros: Good specs for a FreeNAS build. Mini ITX, but still has an 1150 socket. 16GB of RAM is good for a decent sized pool.

Cons: none

Pros: 6 SATA On-Board ports - perfect for a 6-drive RAIDZ2 FreeNAS system.
IPMI allows for remote control of entire system.
Mini-ITX board fits perfectly in a Lian Li PC-Q25B Case.

Cons: None so far.

Other Thoughts: Paired with an Intel Xeon E3-1220V3 and 16 GB ECC RAM. No performance issues at all in a FreeNAS system.

Pros: Would be awesome if it worked...

Cons: So I wrote a previous review giving the board 1 star.
The reason why is that the board I received was a dud, it would not power up with the Kingston ECC registered ram I had bought.
I gave the board 1 star for this reason. After the publication of the review I was contacted by the manufacturer and I was asked to validate the hardware I was using with the board. Which was the aforementioned ram (which was brand new) and an also brand new i3 4130. I was told that the ram I needed did not meet specification. Fair enough I should have read the manual. armed with my new manual I logged right back into newegg and ordered one of the ram sticks listed on their "compatible" list.
A few days later I recieved my new ram and installed it.
Nothing. Still busted. So now I have a busted motherboard at the very least 1 ram stick I don't need and I lost two weeks of my life. I'm going to buy an ASUS and call it a day.

Other Thoughts: After being contacted so promptly by their tech support I almost gave them five stars on my old review while waiting for my new ram I am glad I didn't.

Pros: - ECC RAM
- Mini ITX form
- IPMI management

Cons: - Instructions on using IPMI interface poor for an IPMI novice such as myself. I initially thought the board was dead, and only after plugging it into my router and checking the IP address assigned to it, was I able to attach to the web interface and power on the board. Overall quality of the IPMI documentation is mediocre.

Other Thoughts: I had originally ordered the Supermicro X10SLM+-F, which is a micro-ATX form factor, but then found this mini-ITX board and returned the Supermicro board.
Once I got the board powered up, it has been running flawlesssly since.
I was a bit unsure about the RAM as the ASRock site didn't explicitly list Kingston KVR16LE11S8/4 sticks (1.35V ECC) as supported, but I have had no issues with them.
I'm using an i3-4130T CPU.

Pros: None at the moment.
Everyone reading this knows the pros
6 Sata ports
2 Gig E ports
IPMI
etc.

Cons: It doesn't work.

Other Thoughts: Its really disappointing to purchase my shiny new toy and have it not boot :(

Manufacturer Response:

Dear ASRock Customer

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.
Please check if the BIOS version that comes with the board is compatible with using CPU at link below.
What kind of RAM are you using?
http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E3C224D2I#CPU Support List
Please contact us with detail information of using components and preblem description at william@asrockamerica.com. We will assist you shortly.

Thank you

ASRock SUPPORT
Tech Support Email: http://event.asrock.com/tsd.asp?ln=en

Pros: True "enterprise grade" features in a Mini-ITX form factor, and consumer pricing:
- Fully-featured IPMI (including console redirection and virtual media) for truly headless operation
- ECC RAM support
- PCIe slot supports RAID cards (I've seen cheap motherboards whose PCIe slot only accepts video cards)
- Support: William Lee at ASRock has helped me through two problems that I consider to be fairly technical. Note that this is an actual person writing detailed, personal emails using excellent English.

Cons: I use this board for a headless home server that I keep tucked away in a not-easily-accessible location. That means working console redirection and virtual media (features of the BMC/IPMI) are critical. This board has that, and generally it works quite well, but I believe there is a bit of refinement and polish still required. This is why I docked one egg in the overall rating.

For example: as I mentioned, I deployed a system based on this board in a hard-to-reach location. But that was not a problem as the IPMI functionality made it easy to interface. However, on the computer I used to access the IPMI, I switched to AVG Anti-Virus, which actually blocks the IPMI. However, disabling some of the web-filtering features of AVG allows the IPMI to work without issue. (Arguably, this is actually an issue with AVG.)

Another problem was when the web IPMI interface simply stopped working. William at ASRock tech support was able to help me get this working again.

You can actually telnet or ssh into the IPMI system (default username is "sysadmin", password "superuser"). It appears to be a small Linux system. However, this system does not appear to be documented anywhere. But it seems as though it could be a quite useful tool.

There are network interface bonding options in the IPMI config. However, there is only one dedicated interface for IPMI; the other two interfaces are presumably only for the OS. So bonding makes no sense in this context... everything works, so maybe it's OK, but it annoys me a little that there is no explanation for this.

Overall, the cons basically annoyances, not deal-breakers. I would have docked another egg if it wasn't for the excellent support I've received from ASRock. I reserve five eggs for a truly perfect-in-every-way product. My experience with this motherboard is that it's just shy of perfect, so I can't give it the full five eggs.

Other Thoughts: I use this for an all-in-one home server that acts as:
- A file server (using Linux software raid)
- A Linux development server
- MythTV backend (open source DVR)
- An MPD (music player daemon) server for my whole-house sound system (no built-in audio on this board, but works fine with a HiFiMeDIY USB DAC)

Build is:
- ASRock e3c224d2i motherboard (of course!)
- Xeon E3-1230v3
- Noctua NH-L9i heatsink/fan
- Seasonic SS-300M1U power supply
- U-NAS NSC-800 DIY NAS chassis
- IBM M1050 RAID card (flashed to "IT" mode to be a pure HBA)
- Two Intel SSDs in RAID-1 for OS and user home directories
- Five 3TB 5400 RPM 3.5 HDDs in Linux software RAID-6
- One 3TB 5400 RPM 3.5 HDD for MythTV recordings
- 2x8GB (16GB total) Crucial ECC RAM

I actually run the CPU with only two cores enabled, and TurboBoost disabled. These settings are designed to act as a safety measure against possible overheating. (I am basically artificially lowering the CPU's TDP.) The NSC-800 chassis is *very* compact, so I'm being over-cautious in the interest of making overheating virtually impossible. Even with these deliberately lower-performance settings, the system is more than adequate for my needs.

Once again, I want to openly thank William at ASRock for the excellent support he's provided.

Pros: This is a great buy. No need to go into detail on features, but this is a great home server board. Several case "smart" fan connectors, IPMI, ECC, dual LAN, internal USB are all premium features if you use it in this role.

Top of the line premium support (see "other thoughts").

Cons: Had an issue where board refused to POST after 9 months

Other Thoughts: Let me join the chorus of praises for William at ASRock Rack. I had an issue where my board wouldn't post after humming merrily along in near 24/7 operation for 9 months. To further complicate things, I am living in Europe and was concerned about the extra challenges that might entail.

I needn't have worried. Raising a ticket through the website brought William into my life, and let me assure you that he offers a level of support that is exceedingly rare. Friendly, courteous, intelligent, insightful and ultra-responsive are all accurate descriptors.

William and I had a string of around 25 emails over the span of a couple of weeks. Most of my emails to him were turned around within an hour, if not minutes. He liaised with the ASRock Europe team to get some new BIOS and BMC chips to me, which were at my doorstep within a few days.

After Will guided me through the process of flashing the MAC addresses on, I was good to go.

No one enjoys tech problems, especially not on a home server rig that serves as a central filing system / repository. But stuff happens, and it's how a company responds that really determines their reputation and whether they will earn repeat business.

I was thoroughly impressed with ASRock support, specifically with William from ASRock Rack. Would definitely recommend this product without hesitation and I will be buying more from them in the future!