mATX board for a lga 1155 xeon

[chappys4life]

Trying to find a solid board for my new esxi host in my homelab. Scored a E3-1230v2 for free through work.
Any suggestions?

 

[RTM]

Something like a Supermicro X9SCM-F would probably work, just keep in mind that you might have to manually add the driver for the 82579LM nic (if I remember correctly the 82574L NIC is supported natively) with ESXi. If you google the NIC and ESXi, I am sure you will find a tutorial probably even on this forum.

If you do not want to deal with manual driver installation, the X9SCM-iiF might be a good alternative as it has replaced the 82579LM with a 82574L NIC.

There are a few extra models from Supermicro that might be interesting for you, you could cross reference this "list" with what you can find on eBay. From what I can see on the "list", the difference with mATX boards is mainly chipset (and thus no. of SATA 3 ports), IPMI functionality (-f) and whether or not it uses 82574L + 82579LM or 2x 82574L.

 

[RTM]

Another thing you should keep in mind, is that if you buy a board that have not been updated to a recent BIOS, chances are that a "v2" (ivy bridge) CPU will not work in the board. The best way to get around that, is probably to buy some old cheap sandybridge CPU, boot the board with that and update it.

 

[chappys4life]

I would prefer not to use supermicro. I am trying to avoid ECC, I have 32gb of non ecc udimms