Server motherboards?

[thehunt78]

While looking for a motherboard to build a small NAS system to store movies and music with at home I ran across these motherboards from Supermicro. I have never seen boards like these before. Some of them use two CPUs and some of them can hold 12 RAMM cards! I assume these are for business machines but some of them have features I want like six SATA connections and some of them are extremly well priced. My question is can I use one of these for a small home built NAS? Any idea why some of them use two CPUS? Could one of these be used for an everyday desktop computer runnung windows to just surf the web? Also could they be used for gaming? Some of them have a sick amount of PCI slots.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SUPERMICRO-MBDPDSGEO-Intel-955X-ATX-Intel-Pentium-Server-Motherboard-PDSGE-NEW-/140877829353?pt=Motherboards&hash=item20ccf914e9

http://www.amazon.com/Intel-Server-Board-S1200BTL-motherboard/dp/B007M4YYKY/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1357655559&sr=8-11&keywords=server+motherboards

Also: I plan on using Freenas as my OS

 

[rene13cross]

Server motherboards are optimised more for server usage, as you can imagine. This generally means plenty of RAM slots (usually ECC RAM, much slower), lots of CPU threads (usually means they support 2 or more CPUs) and of course lots of PCI slots. They are not optimal for gaming and are generally more expensive.

I would recommend sticking to Desktop boards. Even at those price points you will get better desktop boards, even for NAS usage, that have lots of SATA ports (some desktop boards have up to 8 ports). Also, if you were to encounter any difficulties or errors while using those desktop boards, they would be MUCH harder to troubleshoot.

If you just plan on using the machine as a NAS, stick to desktop components, you won't need all those features that server machines provide and you'll save yourself a lot of headaches.

 

[Zebble]

Since you're building a NAS, I assume it will be on 24x7, which is also what server boards are designed for.

Intel has recently released their Atom-based Server CPU's/SoC that look very interesting! You get low cost, low wattage, and server-grade all on one board.

SuperMicro has one "coming soon". I expect the price will be around $200.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/X9/X9SBAA-F.cfm