Legit Reviews

I have been told by ASUS tech support that all the recent Intel and nVidia chipsets will refuse to run a server OS on a desktop motherboard but AMD did not [at least not yet] restrict this. If true, this is really crappy of Intel and I will be finally switching to AMD processors.

Can anyone verify this for other mobo makers using Intel chipsets? It is at minimum true of actual Intel mobos as I have read exactly that on their website though they claimed it was a lack of drivers rather than flat out blocking which is what the ASUS guy told me they now do.

I would appreciate any good motherboard suggestions for building an "HTPC 2008 server". It will sit in my wire closet anyway so I want good 5.1 audio to my A/V receiver and video to my Sony HDTV as well as run 2008 Server with Hyper-V for my development and testing work. Hopefully IE7 running Silverlight for Netflix and Winamp run well on 2008 Server.

Also, I'm far from an expert at audio or video so I need advice on 1) for decent 5.1 audio, is the now normally builtin audio in the latest motherboards sufficient if I'm just going to route it to my A/V receiver with S/PDIF optical cable or are audio cards really worthwhile in this case even if not running speakers directly from the PC? and 2) will I get better video on my Sony 1080i HDTV using HDMI output from the mobo or a graphics card vs. using an analog D-Sub connection that will display the native 1366x768 resolution of the TV which is what I am doing on my current system. Sony support says the later is better even if analog and others claim the former would be better. One thing I don't like about HDMI is the audio apparently cannot be split out in the A/V receiver and would have to go to the TV and then back to the receiver. I know it is 7.1 capable but don't need but 5.1 so optical is fine for me if lostless but I want the best video I can get to a 1080i TV that has a 1366x768 native resolution. I have verified that my current XP system displays at this resolution using a Radeon card to the D-Sub connector.

Any advice and experience most welcome!

Thanks, Dave

Totally untrue. Apparently I imagined the 2008 Server Installs we have in work.

What mobos/chipsets are you using? Have you had issues with drivers? Thanks!

Trust me, they work on all of them. Were did you get this information from?

As I mentioned, ASUS tech support. Actually it was pre sales support but the guy was pretty knowledgeable in general even if wrong about this. Perhaps the very latest chipsets have this issue? I know there is no intrinsic reason to not run on a desktop mobo but I could think of a few ways to detect if a server OS and not allow it but it would indeed be very sleazy to do so. All the same, I don't want to invest in the lastest mobo/chipset to find out that 2008 server with Hyper-V does not work. I'm a developer but know hardware some. Intel's site does claim you cannot run the server OS on THEIR mobos but blame it on drivers so good to know I could use a Vista driver. Thanks for your input.

Who here hasn't had a confident sales man tell them 100% bull crap? I have been told all kinds of stuff from a sales guy that "knew his stuff" but didn't.

Pre sales support is just another name for sales guy trying to get an up sale in. OH you can't possibly run a server OS on a $90 desktop board it just won't work here is the 400+ uberboard that you have to use for the server OS. The huckster is just trying to get you to spend more money that's his job.

Just to update and close this thread, I am running server 2008 standard with hyper-v enabled just fine on a gigabyte ep45-ud3p board which is a great board with dual bios and a cache of 8 bios settings you can remember.