SUPERMICRO MBD-X9SCL-O LGA 1155 Intel C202 Micro ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server Motherboard

Pros: Good feature set for a server board, comes with 6 SATA connectors (one for each sata port). Doesn't seem like a big deal, but i've purchased boards that only came with 1/2 (despite having more sata ports on the board). SATA connectors are all in one location on-board, they also all use the same RAID controller.

Cons: The case lights/switches connector section is poorly placed, I ended up with the wires for my case extending precariously close to my RAM. Nothing a little cable re-routing didn't fix, though. -1 Egg because it does not support SATA 3.0 or USB 3.0 on board. I'm a bit new to server boards, but it seems like most of the cost was for the ability to use ECC RAM, still seems steep.

Overall Review: Make sure you buy the correct RAM for this board, ECC Unbuffered. Any other type of RAM will not work (I tested this to see if I could use some RAM I had lying around as backup sticks). ECC Buffered/Registered and Non-ECC RAM simply will not work at all.

Pros: Good Little board. For those who have memory issues, try reading the DETAILS page right on this site! It clearly lists what memory you need to use. (duh!)

Cons: People that don't know what they are doing giving this bad reviews.

Overall Review: If it's slow you aren't using a fast enough disk! I Used a 3ware 9750i card and 4 of the new Samsung 840 Pro SSD's.

Pros: Great board with a big improvement over the Lynnfield in disk IO. We run these with LSI 9260 RAID cards and couldn't be happier IO improvements. Also, no problems running Windows or Linux. Though we needed get the latest NIC Drivers from the Intel site and compile them for our CentOS builds.

Cons: Seems like they are hard to get.

Pros: The version of the board I received supported my Ivy Bridge CPU out of the box. Still, it's not a bad idea to keep a Sandy Bridge CPU around just in case you get one with older BIOS. To those complaining about memory issues, remember that this is a server class board, and as such requires server class memory. Stick with decent unregistered ECC and you'll be fine.

Cons: The placement of the power headers does not jive with several Supermicro cases. I had to purchase a 12" extension to fit in my Supermicro case. You'd think their engineering departments would talk to each other from time to time.

Pros: Inexpensive, extremely stable & very fast. Those that are having trouble should carefully read the specs on the web site. They are clear & concise.

Cons: Not exactly a con, it was a little tricky to find & configure the right PCI-X slot for my RAID controller. A few attempts of trial & error and I was there.

Overall Review: My specs: Supermicro X9XSCL, Xeon E3 3.1Ghz, 8GB ECC Kingston PC3 10700, Highpoint Rocket Raid 2720, 5 WD WD10EFRX 1TB in RAID 5, 1 WD10EFRX 1TB for PC Backups, 1 WDC WD20EFRX 2TB for Server Backups, 1x4 + 1x3 slot hot-Swap backplanes, WHS 2011 SP1.

Pros: Have built about 10 servers using this board, and never had an issue. Everything works as expected. Great price, rock-solid stable.

Cons: Would be nice if fan control would work with 3-pin fans, but this is documented so can't knock it an egg.

Overall Review: Not sure why some other reviewers are having so many problems. Maybe its not really the motherboard's fault...

Pros: Everything works as expected except... (see cons)

Cons: The primary NIC works, however linux (CentOS) does not recognize the second NIC for some reason, which sucks as we had planned on doing backups of the server on our private network, instead of using the public network.

Pros: I just realized it's been over five years since I bought this board. I bought it only after very careful review with plans for a raid controller on the first PCI slot. After over five years, it's been absolutely everything I could have asked for. It's running ~50 virtual machines like a champ.

Cons: My (a little bit oversized) CPU fan gets in the way of replacing RAM.