TYAN B7002G20V4H 1U Nehalem & Westmere ready Server Barbone,Dual LGA 1366 Dual Intel Xeon 5500/5600 Series

Pros: Stable, simple, solid. These are workhorses. They may not be raging fast, but they'll get the job done every time.

Cons: Racking hardware is a little awkward. HDD trays are somewhat flimsy. Single Power supply. Software RAID.

Other Thoughts: We have 10 of these in service for nearly 2 years now. 2 CPU each, 24 GIG ram each, 4X1TB drives each. ZERO failures all around. 400+ day uptime on all of them. Running ESXi. These aren't super machines so don't expect things like dual power supplies, but they'll work like pack mules and not quit. SERIOUS BANG FOR YOUR BUCK! Worth their weight in gold! Of all the equipment we buy on newegg, I'm surprised to see these are still listed exactly as they are when we bought them. WILL BUY MORE SOON!

Pros: High quality materials, heavy gauge metal, well-constructed. Dual Xeon Westmere's may not be the cheapest processors at the moment, but overall, at the time of this review it wound up being the most economical way to go to still have some upgradability and present horsepower. Integrated MegaRAC BMC (ILO/DRAC) is EXCELLENT addition that, in retrospect, I am VERY glad to have. Came with latest firmware installed. MegaRAC Java app allows full redirection of console, including remote media (CD/DVD), so you can use an .ISO locally, and dont even need to worry about adding USB CD/DVD drive for OS install, let alone purchasing an integrated one.

For the money, I could not find a name brand server that is anywhere as well equipped as I've made this, for anywhere near the money. Hardware quality seems just as good as Dell / HP, honestly. Very well packaged.

Cons: Single power supply only, but that's why I bought more than one server for my cluster! ;-)

Other Thoughts: Haven't used the rails yet, but I understand they're a little funky. I would definitely recommend this as an excellent foundation for an extremely capable ESXi host/cluster. VERY happy with my purchase. My whole host config is here: https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/MySavedWishDetail.aspx?ID=20425826

Pros: I now own 9 of these servers, all purchased from newegg. I originally purchased 4 for my company in April 2010, and reviewed them at that time under the alias "The Network Admin", who is now the Information Systems Manager thanks in part to the reliability of these great servers.

Cons: Why am I required to put text in this field?

Other Thoughts: Onboard RAID on these sucks. Setup 4 drives in RAID5 on the ICH10R if you want to experience some dismal speeds... My recommendation - buy a RAID card.

I recently purchased some LSI Megaraid 9260-4i cards (N82E16816118106) for all of the servers, and they fit/work absolutely perfectly in these servers. They are also very cost effective for how much RAM/features they have. You'll have to buy a SAS-SAS cable to go from the raidcard to the backplane, and you're good to go.

Over the last 2+ years, I've been updating the BIOS and iKVM firmware as Tyan releases them, and I haven't had any issues.

I think newegg is still selling these servers because people keep buying them, as many of the other server barebones have fallen off. Do yourself a favor and buy one of these guys if you're looking for a very cost effective build with incredible reliability and performance.

Pros: Great case. Includes Dual CPU heat sink, which was a pleasant surprise (no CPU fan). I paired the system with two Intel Xeon E5606 Processors (BX80614E5606), Kingston 8GB modules (KVR1333D3D4R9S/8G), two Dynatron G199 CPU Coolers (Fan and sink - includes thermal compound!! N82E16835114085) and a Western Digital SATA drive. I already had a DVD-ROM.

The system was easy to get up and running and is capable of all virtualization platforms currently running. After the initial startup the system is quiet and is running to expectations.

The system included rails and cam packaged very well.

Cons: The included rails were a little difficult to understand and the documentation on them was sparse. Also their connection to the rack was non traditional, but worked after I understood it.

But that is about the worst I can say about it.

Other Thoughts: Great system cost me less than $1500 to complete. It is now my primary virtual host using Hyper-V. I went with the E5606 Processors to reduce cost, so there is room to add more RAM and upgrade the processors if you need that.

Pros: This barebone is wonderfully built from a brand you can always rely on.

Cons: None.

Other Thoughts: Onboard raid is softraid so it will not work in vmware ESXi.
My configuration: LSI MegaRAID SATA/SAS 9260-4i N82E16816118106; LSI LSI00161 MegaRAID LSIiBBU07 Battery Backup N82E16816118118; Wintec 48GB (6 x 8GB) N82E16820161459; Intel Xeon E5620 Westmere 2.4GHz N82E16819117234; 3ware CBL-SFF8087 N82E16816116094.

Pros: The TYAN setup is just simply amazing. This is being used as a webserver running CentOS 5.6 w/cPanel and is located in a datacenter.

The best part about this is the IPMI interface that it comes with. I can do a console redirection and watch the server boot back up and enter the BIOS without ever leaving my PC :D!

Great job TYAN!

Cons: The IPMI interface was giving a strange error message, but TYAN straightened it out with a simple flash of the IPMI chip.

Other Thoughts: Fans are noisy... not really a con though, it is in a data center people!

Pros: Configuration and install was flawless. Passed extensive burn-in with flying colors.

I initially installed active Dyn_tron coolers on both chips. I was not impressed with the performance and decided to go back to stock. It ran 10 degrees cooler with the passive, stock cooler.

Cons: The design is good but the assembly needs to be fine-tuned. I found that none of the cable tie-downs that were designed into the chassis were being utilized. I had to rewire the compartments next to the power supply to conform to the designers' intent. It definitely cleaned up the cabling but the assemblers really should be doing this. Also, three of the board screws were not fully tightened.

The 12V rail is slightly under-volted, in both minimal and maximum configuration scenarios. I'm considering swapping the power supply for a Sparkle.

Other Thoughts: The drive trays include adapter bays for 2.5" disks.

Running 2008 web on mirrored raptors, for a medium-sized website. Page load times improved by a few seconds, over a 2003/Tyan server with a dedicated raid card and 15K SCSIs. Backup time went from hours to minutes. I love the future!

This Tank (Tyan's product code) is loud and is intended for a datacenter, or dedicated server room. If you put this in the basement, you will still here it in the garage.

Pros: Solid case, easy to assemble, rack mounts/slide worked and mounted perfectly in our colo. Running 2x6 core Xeons in ours with 24GB of ram. Processors and RAM popped in easily.

Cons: Two gripes, first is that the on-board raid is "software" raid, in that it doesn't have a dedicated co-processor, it uses your processors and ram to handle raid which adds a little overhead/cost in performance and makes the case not-as-compatible with certain distros that require hardware-raid (eg. VSX/XenCenter/etc).

Secondly, one month after installation in our colo some really unexpected and inconsistent issues started occuring including a few kernel panics and random drive issues. Have not been able to credit the problem to the RAM or HDDs (but it still may be the CPUs). I'm worried that we may have got a dud of a server. Ordering some replacement parts to see if we can workaround this issue.

Other Thoughts: FYI, any review here on newegg that even mentions the loudness of the fans, I recommend you immediately ignore (this applies to any and all rack mount server reviews). These servers are intended to be in a colocation facility and are not designed to be "quiet" unless explicitly stated. Buncha non-nerds. :P

Pros: Very good server for the price. I'm using the ICH10R for RAID 5 with Windows Server 2008 R2. I have FOUR (Samsung HD103SJ) 1TB drives in RAID 5. Yes, it does work! The limitation is that the boot drive must be smaller than 2TB. I set mine up to have a 200GB boot drive and the rest (2.65TB) as another volume.

Cons: none really

Other Thoughts: There is an internal slot for putting in an additional adapter. I originally wanted to get a hardware RAID card instead of using the ICH10R. Once I found out that the ICH10R would support 4 drives, I opted to stick with the ICH10R. One reason was that the RAID card I was looking at had an optional backup battery pack. According to the reviews for the RAID card, that backup battery pack was a necessity. The problem was that I couldn't be certain that the battery backup would fit inside the case.

I ended up putting another network card in that slot for virtual servers.

So far the ICH10R is working. I know it isn't the best RAID solution, but it works for what I need.

I'm using Hyper-V 2008 R2 to host two virtual servers.

Pros: Dual processor capable, 4 drive bays SATA-II, VMware approved (ESX/ESXi 4.0 but I am running 4.1 without issue), 8 DIMM slots up to 64GB of RAM and all the other specs you see.

Cons: Fans a bit loud but not much more than the HP ProLiant DL320 G5p it is next to. Drive trays seem a bit cheap but that is very minor to me.

Other Thoughts: vSphere (ESXi) 4.1 installed without issue. Passive heatsink was one of the easiest I've installed.