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

Pros: Great server. Rock solid motherboard, stays cool, stable, and quiet (hahaha theyre actually pretty loud but I have them in a datacenter)

Cons: none? I mean, its $599 and you get WAY more than you pay for...

Overall Review: Following up on a previous review - by me - "The Network Admin", now I'm the IS Director thanks to Tyan.... My 4 servers have been running for 6 months... no crashes or problems. I am fully satisfied with this product.

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

Cons: None.

Overall Review: 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: 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.

Overall Review: 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: 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! ;-)

Overall Review: 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?

Overall Review: 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.

Overall Review: 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: 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.

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

Pros: Perfect setup for ESXi 4 Update 1 because of supported Intel NIC, sata controller, dual processor and memory capacity.

Cons: Would not boot off USB CD-ROM, just use UNetBootin and any flash drive to install OS. The rack rails were a little strange, but they work.

Overall Review: For ESXi use ACHI.