Pros: I bought the E3-1231v3 (Haswell support) bundled with the SuperMicro X10SL7-F board with the goal of creating a FreeNAS media server that is 24/7. - CPU is very fast and makes people confused/jealous when you tell them you have a Xeon CPU. But in fact, it benchmarks well besides some of the latest I7 processors and for a much cheaper price. - AES-NI encryption. - I stream media over my gigabit LAN from my NAS to my HTPC, and I direct play/bitstream everything since my HTPC supports all formats, however, the Xeon doesn't break a sweat when transcoding 2-3 simultaneously. - The Xeon stock CPU heatsink/fan is more than adequate, even for a dedicated server. CPU runs very cool. Thermal grease pre-applied to heatsink. - Supermicro board is fantastic, if you're okay with settling for DDR3.. (suits my needs just fine). - The board's big pro in my view is the 8xSAS2 ports (6Gbps) via the integrated LSI 2308 HBA. Flash the firmware to IT mode and FreeNAS recognizes the ports, which can be used for SATA connections. This alone makes this motherboard completely worth it, and is very popular among FreeNAS users. - With the SAS2 ports, you have a total of 14 SATA connections available. - IPMI ethernet port. Installed/configured FreeNAS completely via IPMI (grab IPMIView from Supermicro website to discover DHCP IP, and I preferred configuring it through the IPMI web interface.) - Low power consumption - Very affordable option when purchasing the CPU + board as a combo. Beats other competitor sites.

Cons: - Unlike the i7/i5, no integrated graphics support with the CPU, so you would need a video card if you're running it as a desktop system. This is no problem for me using it as a standalone server, as I used IPMI to configure everything from another computer on the same LAN. - The motherboard can be really picky about what RAM it supports - be sure to check supermicro.com. I recommend Crucial. - Not really a "con" unless you are trying to support large amounts of disks, but the motherboard maxes out at 32GB of ECC ram (FreeNAS requires a lot of RAM, be sure to use ECC). - Nothing included with the SuperMicro motherboard. It's a micro ATX board in an anti-static bag with a flimsy piece of foam surrounding it. Luckily everything worked.

Overall Review: - Crucial 32GB ECC UNBUFERRED memory. - Raidz2 (Raid6) 8x3TB WD Red drives, using 2 for parity. - If this is going to be a 24/7 server, make sure to get a eco-grade power supply. Compared to my older desktop, my Seasonic PSU is excellent and usually the server only uses between 77-90W. Overall, I'm happy with the performance so far from this combo. Considering everything in the machine is "server grade" hardware, I hope some good Q/A was done so nothing dies anytime soon!