SUPERMICRO MBD-X8SIE-F-O ATX Server Motherboard LGA 1156 Intel 3420 DDR3 1333

Pros: Nice layout on the board with all the necessary connections for a production server.

Cons: If you plan to install Small Business Server 2008, skip this board. It does not support SBS 2008 and will not install. Worked with SuperMicro Tech support for over an hour only to discover SBS 2008 not compatible.

Pros: Runs great inside supermicro case. Good workmanship. Plenty of monitoring options. Software can email hardware alerts and you can also monitor temperatures and voltages over SNMP

Cons: lacks IDE port. I was a bit surprised by that when I installed it into supermicro 825TQ server chassis that comes with IDE DVD drive and is said to be designed for this mobo among others.

Pros: Installed windows server 2008 no problem, as well as exchange server on another. Great board and layout. IPMI is great and dual lan gig ports.

Cons: None really.

Overall Review: Make sure you get x8 RAM (for kingston it has 8R in its name)

Pros: Inexpensive and reliable

Cons: No IDE, as with all SuperMicro MOBO's very particular about RAM.

Overall Review: This is a very good board for the money. I don't know what the problem was for the other reviewer, but I was able to install SBS 2008 without any issues whatsoever.

Pros: good price.

Cons: If you plan to run registared memory in this board make sure you go to their website and find out what they support. Kingston is not one of them and neither is patriot.

Overall Review: One of the brands it does support is micron. Maybe that should be a con :P.

Pros: This product is a motherboard. It nominally has a BIOS, and boots.

Cons: The IPMI is unable to hold connections. It will, after high transfer, disconnect for 5-10 seconds and lose all TCP connections. It does this quite often in fact, often enough that the IPMI is 95% of the time unusable for installing an operating system. I even tried Ubuntu's mini.iso (12MB!) and it loses connection when it switches to the color loading screen. Reconnects don't have a working KVM keyboard. Great. The motherboard has disastrous NIC problems, probably due to faulty power management if bug report 'fixes' are any indication. See Sourceforge's e1000e driver. Notice all the 82574L NIC bug reports. Notice how many are for the X8SIE motherboard set. The chipset does not accept high density RAM. In the normal price range then you are stuck with 2GB instead of 4GB ECC.

Overall Review: This is a _seriously_ defective product.

Pros: Dual Intel Gbe LAN, I/O cluster layout consistent with previous generation SM boards, dedicated IPMI/BMC LAN, remote KVM works pretty well, support was responsive with beta IPMI FW, 6 memory slots (Xeon only--4 if you use an i3 or similar)

Cons: All 5 onboard fan headers ONLY support speed control with 4-pin PWM--if your fans are 3-pin, they run full speed. On a 1U chassis with 40x40x38mm screamer fans, this makes for a loud box, even for a 1U. Required a beta IPMI/BMC FW from SuperMicro support for the remote KVM to work under Java 6u20 (latest at time of writing)

Overall Review: Built using a Core i3-530 and 4x1GB Samsung PC3-8500 ECC UDIMMs in a 1U chassis with the SM SNK-P0046P heatsink.