A proper power user has much to gain from the options within the BIOS. Fan management, DIMM voltage regulation, idle power draw, hardware monitoring, remote security features, and literally dozens of other menus with which I am still completely unfamiliar. I can honestly say, as a tinkerer, that I have maybe touched 5% of the options here. This was my first experience with a BIOS intended for server management outside of Dell rack servers, and I was blown away with the controls and options afforded me. The machine booted to POST on the first try, and I was greeted by an extensive BIOS, to say the least. Par for the course and I do not dock them a star for this. The operating manual is workable, though it lacks critical details in many areas (especially BIOS menu descriptions) and was clearly translated out of Chinese by a non-native speaker. I took the dive on an "open box" offering here some months ago, and it arrived well packaged and with all relevant documentation. Obviously, finding server management features in this form factor pretty much leaves you looking at this motherboard or nothing at all. That said, this review will be presented entirely via the lens of an Unraid server deployment and may not be relevant for everyone. I will preface by saying that I run Unraid on this motherboard with a few Windows VMs (XP and Win10) and several docker containers 24/7, and it has been a very stable motherboard for me now for about 6 months. I wrote this before I fully understood the nature of x8' vs X16 GPU performance, so take that passage with a grain of ignorant salt please: Also, I hope you never need Asus support: they are notoriously horrible for technical issues. Would love to hear other ACE users chime in here too. pass through the USB-c 3.2 port to windows still doesn't translate to quick charge.my power draw is much higher for this new build vs the mATX X470D4U build.this is possibly my own ignorance, but as I came from an AsrockRack X470-D4U I was completely spoiled by the ease of sensor integration and data collection i have not figured out how to get onboard statistics to Unraid.fan control is lacking, which is to say I run 5x noctuas of various sizes on 3 headers, and the BIOS fan control just doesn't seem to work well enough for my taste to utilize the full range of the PVM capability.if you're looking for a proper BMC/IPMI experience, this ain't it the remote management software requires Windows to be running, and thus for me is COMPLETLY unusable.there's really no reason why 1000Mbps is the cap on a workstation board.Some things I think this board leaves on the table, frustrations, etc with this, the 4xSATA built onto the board, and 2x4 SAS from my card, I have 16 drives of controller capability, and this is without the M.2 drives the U.2 connector is cool, though I currently don't use it, this might be a selling point for you.healthy assortment of I/O on the back panel and internally.IOMMU groups make sense and work for my needs: there is good separation of USB controllers, which is sometimes a shortcoming. i would guess that this offering is why you would buy this board vs other boards of a similar cost the triple x8 PCI lanes are really nice, as I can run my 1660 super at x16 and still have x8 for my SAS card.With that all behind me, I'll explain why I like this motherboard and what I think should have been improved in the design stage. For now it's a glorified NAS that hosts a couple VMs. I don't run a ton of dockers, I don't host Plex, and I don't run a security grid for my house. I run 1 parity drive, 2 array drives (all 3 WD Re SAS on an Dell PowerEdge SAS card), 2x 2.5" SSD cache drives, and a single NVMe stick for a Windows Gaming VM. Let me also say that I am not a power user. At this price point I am extremely happy with it. I got mine for $200 as an Amazon open box deal, and it came pristine and with all accessories.
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