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If you're building a whitebox server, you need to see this motherboard!

I'm sorry to disappoint you, in that this is a consumer motherboard. So yes, AMD PSP exists, no iLO.

However, that's where the bad part ends.

Behold, what is in my opinion, the most server-like MicroATX board released to the consumers: the MSI PRO B550M-VC WIFI Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard/alternate link.

If you followed the link and read the specifications you would know exactly what I'm talking about, but for people who didn't, here is the summary:

  • 4 x16 ports (3 of them work at x1 speeds, the one closest to the CPU is PCI Express 5.0 x16).
  • 8 SATA3 ports (people who wanted to build a NAS should be visibly salivating at this point).

Apart from that, there are 2 nice features that I would personally like to point out, as I look for these features in every board:

  • 128GB of RAM supported (no ECC, and I suppose a lot of motherboards support it now, but nice to have).
  • A 2230 E-key slot.
    • I know a few of you might be wondering why I'm mentioning the slot used for a WiFi card in this post - I invite you to take a look at this.
      • It's a link to an Aliexpress item, so if you don't want to click, here's a short version: It's an E-key to 2.5Gbe converter, using a Realtek RTL8125B chip. It's amazing, I learnt about these adapters from a random Level1Techs video. I think a lot of people could use this.

And there you have it. If you're building a system that requires heavy PCIe access and a lot of SATA3 storage, I think this is the best value you can find when purchasing new.

Cheers

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