SUPERMICRO SYS-5037A-i Mid-Tower Server Barebone LGA 2011 Intel C602 DDR3 1600/1333/1066

Pros: Very easy assembly. Good, solid board. Power supply is nice. Quiet fans (2 included - power supply and rear case fan, 5 M/B 4 pin fan connectors). Case looks nice. Front side USB 2/3 and audio ports. SATA connectors do support hotswap, RAID 5 (also with auto rebuild). 2 onboard LAN. More USB ports than I could ever need. Tech support is a big plus here - they answer the phone and actually know stuff (this is important because the manuals are not as good as they used to be).

Cons: I think screwless cases are generally junk, and this one is no different. The drive never seems secure in the case and the mounting mechanism. Screwless drive bays seem to be a solution looking for a problem. I guess now people everywhere with computers but no screw drivers can rejoice (but they won't be able to actually open the case...). The single 3.5" bay besides also being screwless, mounts funny, in that if you want to secure a drive there you have to knock out a structural metal from the case and it has to be exposed to the face (not even the plastic covers it). If yu want to keep the 3.5" bay internal, say for example to mount your SSD with an adapter, you can't actually secure it to the case - it just sits there. Also the case feels a bit flimsy on the inside. My first Supermicro case from 1996 was a tank and much heavier metal, also better finishing on the edges (this is not that, but it is good and when closed and built it's a solid case). No onboard VGA - something to think about if you are looking to use this as a VM host. Occupying the 3.5" drive bay makes it hard to release the swing out 3.5" 4 drive cage which is below.

Other Thoughts: A bit of confusion - this system comes with only SATA ports, 2 SATA3 (6Gb/s), and 8 SATA2. SCU supports RAID 5 (4 ports, numbered 0-3). Another board "X9SRA-3" has SAS connectors. Intel AHCI is 6 ports 2 of which are SATA3. This seemed contradictory from what was written in the manual. Space at bottom/front of case is for 2.5" drive cage, but without he cage it just becomes a weird dead space. Very good workstation rig. I can't comment on SLI or Xfire. Weird thing, I can't seem to get the RAM to 1600MHz. Even if I "force" it to 1600 MHz in the BIOS, it is still posting as 1333 MHz. UEFI BIOS is a bit confusing.

Pros: Feature rich, price point looks good on paper

Cons: one of two DOA, super picky with memory that isn't typically an issue.

No onboard video of any kind

NO HEATSINK

Other Thoughts: This could be a great system as a workstation, featureset is there and supermicro has always been great for support but no heatsink really sucks, you can get a better system for the additional $50 that does include a HSF.

By the time you add a video card to the mix, we're looking at roughly an additional $100 bucks, this could get you a much better barebones system that includes these features.

I wouldn't buy this one again.

Pros: Fast, reliable, and clean.

Cons: Doesn't come with a heatsink for the CPU like their server barebones, no eggs taken off, I knew that going in.

Other Thoughts: This
Intel E5-1650
Corsair SSD
32GB DDR3 1600
AMD W7000