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Some Advice on a modern motherboard

Lutiana

Lutiana

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So I have an Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1240 (8M Cache, 3.30 GHz socket M2) on an Intel S1200BTL server motherboard running 16Gb of ECC RAM (4x4gb), and I want to use this as my main gaming machine but the Intel Server board is not that great for this use, since it does not support SLI and has some integrated features that are a bit annoying.

Does anyone out there have an suggestions on a decent gaming motherboard that will work with this RAM and CPU? The ones I seem to find don't mention the XEON processor in the supported CPU sections, so I figured I'd get some advice from you guys.

Also as a side note, does anyone want to buy the S1200BTL motherboard (and Intel Server Chassis) from me for $200?
 
mikerm said:
On the bright side, I only run one video card and it plays the modern games just fine, no SLI or crossfire.
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Umm, was there something you left out by accident? Seems like a bit of a random statement otherwise.
 
Using server components for a gaming computer makes little sense. The system isn't designed for performance but is used to securely store and transfer data. For instance ECC ram is slower. Try using a board and components designed for speed. I recommend perusing the MaximumPC website for information.
 
Rick Ethridge said:
Using server components for a gaming computer makes little sense.
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Agreed. However the Xeon Processor will work just fine, it competes quite nicely with the i7 processors. I'll eventually replace the RAM with gaming RAM. Right now I am looking for a motherboard that will support this right now.
 
I know of two SLI boards that officially support the Xeon... the Asus P8P67 WS Revolution, and the Asrock P67 Extreme6. There may be others as well, but those are the two I know of. And I'm not sure if I'd recommend the Asus... their boards are becoming pretty notorious for randomly dying without apparent cause.

But pretty much any LGA1155 board should work, even if the Xeon isn't officially supported. That Xeon is basically the same as an i7, just with ECC support and no IGP. The only tricky part with a regular motherboard is the ECC. The ECC support is technically determined by the CPU itself, given that the memory controller is on the chip, but you won't have any way to enable it if the motherboard doesn't have a BIOS option for it... and a motherboard that doesn't officially support the Xeon probably won't have that option. However, you could just run it with non-ECC memory. (You may even be able to run your existing ECC DIMMs with ECC disabled. I know that used to be possible on SDRAM and DDR1, but I'm not too familiar with ECC DDR3 so I can't say for sure that it still allows that.)
 
lutiana said:
So I have an Intel® Xeon® Processor E3-1240 (8M Cache, 3.30 GHz socket M2) on an Intel S1200BTL server motherboard running 16Gb of ECC RAM (4x4gb), and I want to use this as my main gaming machine but the Intel Server board is not that great for this use, since it does not support SLI and has some integrated features that are a bit annoying.

Does anyone out there have an suggestions on a decent gaming motherboard that will work with this RAM and CPU? The ones I seem to find don't mention the XEON processor in the supported CPU sections, so I figured I'd get some advice from you guys.



Also as a side note, does anyone want to buy the S1200BTL motherboard (and Intel Server Chassis) from me for $200?
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You have the foundation for a great gaming machine. I would forget CROSSFIRE and/or SLI as an option. You could go with the top end Asus Matrix 580 Platinum for around $500 and never skip a beat. I recently "upgraded" my new Asus Sabertooth 990FX for CROSSFIRE by adding another XFX 5850 Black. Along with that up grade I was forced to put aside a fairly new 600W P/S for a 950W Antec. Why? I never even considered that the additional 5850 was going to need 2 more 8-pin power connectors. Also, there are trade-offs unless you are going to use your rig just for gaming. When not gaming, everything is a tad slower when in the CROSSFIRE mode. It doesn't get along with W7's Aero nicely. So, you can turn off CROSSFIRE by fiddling with Catalyst a ilttle and then hope to remember that when you want to game again.
 
I have a 620w Corsair PSU (HX620w) and an Nvidia GTX260 Core 216, couple that with the Xeon on a decent board with the 16Gb of RAM it should be a rock solid gaming machine. I am about to get my hands on a second GTX260 for free so I figured I'd SLI the two and get a nice boost there. However the plan is to buy a GTX560 sometime next year (I really don't need the GTX580 since I don't game that much).

Even if I forget about SLI the S1200BTL motherboard is not ideal for a workstation. The BIOS has very few customizable settings and has a built in EFI BIOS that is annoying to configure and is a pain to update. This is all not a problem if you were to use it as a server, however as a workstation I'd like more controll over thermal settings, CPU voltages, memory configuration etc.

I was thinking about using the ASUS Maximus IV Gene-Z ROG since it is a mATX board.

This will actually be the first Intel rig that I have run as a main machine since the P133 was the hottest proc out there. This will hopefully replace an AMD Phenom II X4 940 system w/ 8gb of RAM (on an ASUS A32N-SLI Deluxe WiFi board).
 
As long as you have multiple pci-e cards, sli and crossfire CAN be enabled on ANY motherboard. It just takes hacked drivers. I've setup a 4-way sli on my amd chipset motherboard before, and it worked just fine. head on over to this site: http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/index.php? You are going to find a lot of information on recent computers and how to use the hacked drivers.
 
lutiana said:
Ahh, got ya now. Yeah, SLI is not a make it or break it for me, though it would be nice to get 2 GTX260s in SLI mode.
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Where you get the kick in the 2, 3, and 4 (very high-end) video cards is with multiple monitor setups, 'Eyefinity', for example - 30 inchers or so. This isn't my first go at multiple video cards. A while back I did a SLI rig with 2 Nvidia 6800's. It ran NASCAR and Madden like crazy. Kind of primative by today's standards but still in use by a young teenage family friend. The reason I went with Crossfire was I didn't want to take a beating on my original 5850, although they are selling like hotcakes on eBay these days. BTW, I like my FPS's with the Crossfirefire.
 
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luckybob said:
As long as you have multiple pci-e cards, sli and crossfire CAN be enabled on ANY motherboard. It just takes hacked drivers. I've setup a 4-way sli on my amd chipset motherboard before, and it worked just fine. head on over to this site: http://forums.extremeoverclocking.com/index.php? You are going to find a lot of information on recent computers and how to use the hacked drivers.
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The server board has only one PCIe x16 slot, so even hacked drivers would not help me.
 
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