TYAN S5161G3NR-RS ATX Server Motherboard LGA 775 Intel E7230 DDR2 667

Pros: Built a iscsi SAN using this MB and Opensource Openfiler 3.2. Installed Openfiler 3.2 without any problems to a seagate SATA II 80 HD. Openfiler accessed all the onboard SATA ports & onboard Gig ethernet Nics without issuse. Would highly recommend this MB if installing a linux OS. I decided to buy the MB from previous posted Review that had successfully installed Openfiler thanks...

Cons: None so far...

Overall Review: If you want to use software ware using the onboard SATA II port work great, yet I you need better performance I would recommend purchasing a 3ware SATA II controller, which work great in OF.

Pros: Three onboard nics; two gigabit and one 10/100. ESXi detected all three nics and installed without problems.

Cons: Only one expansion slot, limited processor support.

Overall Review: Built a whitebox ESXi server using this board with an Adaptec 2410SA PCI-X raid controller, and a Pentium D 920 processor. Everything installed smoothly and ESXi detected all the hardware properly. Don't forget to go into the bios and enable booting from the raid controller.

Pros: An excellent server board for a basic server. Three NICs enable easy routing without additional hardware. Also has a decent chipset and supports Pentium D CPU, as well as non-ecc memory.

Cons: The support from TYAN is not very good. Though, I've never talked to anyone from their support team, their website does not offer drivers available for download with the exception of the onboard VGA. If you lose your driver disk, be prepared to hunt down drivers from third party websites.

Overall Review: For a low-end server motherboard, I would expect the one slot to be 32-bit PCI, not 64-bit. It's also a full sized board, so there's no reason that there should only be one slot. Fortunately the purpose I had for the board didn't require any peripherals.

Pros: Great price on a server board with a true server chipset. 3 NICs, PCI-X

Cons: Limited CPU support. Will not support Core 2's, etc. You must get older P4s or Pentium D's...I have not tried Cererlons but I hear they work. Only a PCI-X and 4x PCIE slot (which is offset from standard).

Overall Review: The other reviewer is a little off on the NICs...this thing actually has 3 NICs, not two. 2 of them are indeed Gigabit, and the other is only 10/100, which works great for my purposes as I use the 10/100 for the management port and the 2 GigE ports bonded for the iSCSI transfer. Running the Openfiler Linux SAN/NAS distro with a LSI raid card in the PCI-X slot.

Pros: None

Cons: NO CELERON SUPPORT. That's right, I just got off the phone with Tyan Tech Support who confirmed that.

Pros: N/A

Cons: Do not own yet. Have no idea in regards to compatibility.

Overall Review: Please note that one of the two NIC's are 10/100 not as they are indicated in the picture. Other thougts: I will be pairing this with a low voltage celeron for use in a multi-wan router. When better atom boards come out, it will be repurposed into a high-speed iSCSI target.