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This was an amazing purchase. For a bundle of a Mobo, Ram, and CPUs, you can't do much better. The product came rather dusty, and the heatsinks really badly needed to be cleaned (taken off and scrubbed), but otherwise was in very good condition. The dual E5420s have been treating my new server well, as their solid performance across eight cores is more than enough for my purposes (home game/web/file (multipurpose) server). The RAM is great too: 16GB of DDR2 ECC! They do run EXTREMELY hot (read: 95C), but with a little airflow they get down to 50-70 easy. The fact that this mobo has fans already on it was way more awesome than I thought it would be. These LGA771 heatsinks are pretty damn expensive nowadays, and it was really nice to be able to get the system going (mostly) out of the box. The motherboard was an interesting story. Good things first: Dual Ethernet, Pci-e, LOTS of ram slots, ok IO, and pretty good BIOS/extra feaures (WOL was very easy to enable, for example). It wasn't perfect, however. This mobo had quite a bit of trouble being loaded with modern OSes. While I did get Ubuntu 14.04 LTS running 100% smoothly without any shortcuts in the end, it did take quite a few tries to get it going. Second Problem: This motherboard need a dual EPS power supply (A 4pin and an 8pin). Most power supplies in the 600-700W range (what this mobo needs, about) either have only an eight pin, or a four pin (or an eight that splits into two fours), but not both. At first I was hoping that I could get the system to run with only a four pin and half the 8pin, but it wasn't stable and was really sketchy, so I stopped on that front. In the end, I ended up buying a $140 750W PSU for only $60, (and am therefore satisfied) but just know that deals like those might not always be around and power might be an issue. Also, the nuts for the screws (for the heatsinks and some in the corners) are pretty wonky. They are kinda like bent pieces of metal, and end up kinda being like standoffs. The work fine, and helpif you're temporarily running your server on a table, but kinda look like the might break if screwed on/off too many times. In the end, this product was very much worth the buy. Definitely would recommend to anyone looking to build a home server!Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
This product, while being a slightly older generation than the latest version(s) is very solid. For its' general, overall intended use which is ideal for a workstation system or server motherboard is very supported - Power Supplies, RAM, Hard Drives, etc. are very compatible with all aspects of the board for our intended purpose and very easy to acquire. If properly built, this motherboard builds an incredibly fast, stable, and efficient system.
- Why I bought it: It was sold dirt cheap at $40 a pair. Really bottom dollar for a mobo like this. - What I like most about it: Compatibility with Windows 7. I had a hardrive from an earlier build with an ASUS SABERTOOTH X58 which I simply hooked up just to have something at the SATA ports when going into the BIOS on the first test run. I missed the BIOS prompt and much to my surprise it just went ahead and booted Win 7 without any BSOD's or any trouble although it was installed on a different platform altogether. It was now running on dual Intel 5472 CPU's installed and 5400 "Seaburg" chipset. I don't know if this can be repeated and it's the only time I can remember M$ Windows have given me a sensation of joy. My mobo's came mounted on sturdy traylike backplates with screw slots along the edges. This may make it easy for customizing a case to fit it. However the tray needs to be cut to allow the pci brackets on any adapters mounted to protrude though it to get a full seat in the sockets. The sockets themselves need some hacking to fit x16 cards as they are closed end x8's - What I dislike about it: At this price there is hardly anything to dislike. Maybe one thing: As these mobo's are sold without CPU's the good people mounts the CPU coolers as protection to the socket pins during transport. While the idea is good, not cleaning away the thermal paste from the underside of the coolers before, is not. One of the motherboards had lumps of thermal paste between the pins in the CPU socket. After an ordeal of trying to get it reasonably clean for the test run I think I might have broken something in the process. The mobo cant recognize all installed memory which may sometimes indicate bent pins in the CPU socket. - Whether or not you would buy the product again: I think I might buy one more as a replacement for the bad mobo since I already have the CPU's for it to be used in a small cluster experiment.Read full review
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