SUPERMICRO MBD-C2SBA+-O LGA 775 Intel G33 ATX Intel Motherboard

Pros: Good combination of modern tech with legacy device support - 2 IDE ports/4 devices; floppy header; LPT port; serial ports. Used this MB plus a Pentium E6700 dual-core 3.2 GHz, 4 GB RAM to extend the life of an existing system - reused case, PS (already upgraded), IDE HDD (2) and optical drives (2), floppy drives (to finish cleaning archive data off some diskettes), SVGA monitor, and a nice older HP laser printer with a parallel port. For <$300 this box is probably good for several years.

Cons: Difficult to install and configure Windows 7 OS for same reason described elsewhere - need for IDE driver early in the install. But this doesn't seem unique to this board, found lots of reports elsewhere. Windows 7 comes on a DVD, which may require a driver, which is on the DVD - Catch 22. BIOS configuration is less intuitive than more modern boards, but well worth the benefits of legacy device support. Floppy controller only supports 1 drive, not really an issue but not clear from the specs.

Other Thoughts: SuperMicro OS compatibility says the board is not compatible with Windows 7; but MS compatibility site says it is. Worked out fine in the end. My answer to the ITE IDE controller driver problem mentioned by others - use another Win7 box to make a bootable 4Gb USB flash drive; copy the Win7 install DVD contents to the USB; also copy the contents of the SuperMicro setup disk. Note which ITE chip version before install, when Win7 requires the drivers, browse to the correct folder on the flash drive and install. Win7 install proceeded normally from there. Also manually installed the chipset drivers from the SuperMicro setup driver disk, Win7 provided everything else. SuperMicro disk setup program wouldn't run - repeated error that it couldn't detect hardware, requiring manual chipset driver install as described. Otherwise, so far, so good. Windows Experience Index 3.4 - plenty good for this machine's usage.

Pros: Can use for ESXI. It supports older hardware which allowed my to convert a previous desktop into a VMWare ESXI server. At minimal upgrade cost.

Cons: The BIOS is a little bit tough to configure. Not the BIOS in it entirely mostly the boots setting when it comes to configuring boot order. But once your familiar with it, its no problem. I wish it hard Dual gigabit ports.

Other Thoughts: All in all not a bad board. The overclocking that is allows you to configure is somewhat useless. It has pre-determined overages and when I set it to OC my CPU by 15% I get lower clock speed than what the CPU gets natively.

Pros: Can run old hardware

Cons: Difficult to configure. Unreliable. Unstabilities when saving work.

Other Thoughts: I've built every PC I own since the '90s. I've occasionally faced a problem - a singular problem at most. I'm running WinXP SP3. This mother board has been very unreliable and has some instability that has cost me valuable work. In the month or so I've owned it, I've rebuilt my entire OS and software installations twice. Tonight, it looks like #3. This has been such a time consuming series of tasks, I'm ready to throw this piece of junk out of the window. RUN, don't walk away from this motherboard. Yes, I used all components tested and approved by the manufacturer. My PC is left showing me the wallpaper and an hourglass. Nothing but an expensive paperweight.

Pros: Legacy PCI and IDE support combined with newer interfaces and support for fast Intel processors. System seems very stable and fast once I bought a SATA hard drive.

Cons: IDE is very difficult to setup for a bootable hard drive. I attempted to use my existing IDE hard drive and DVD-rom but could not find the appropriate combination of drivers to allow the IDE hard drive to boot. Attempted installing drivers via floppy disk (using Super Micro's disk image programs on the CD with another computer) but had no success. Went out and bought a SATA DVD-rom so I could use Super Micro's installation CD, no luck there either. Finally (after wasting most of my weekend) went out and bought a SATA hard drive which, once I installed VISTA, booted just fine.

Other Thoughts: Others have posted here saying that they were able to get driver's installed to support IDE hard drive, but I was not able to. If you only have IDE hardware think about getting SATA hardware or be prepared to spend some time trying to make the IDE hardware boot with this mobo. I am still able to read/write to my IDE hard drive though, so this mobo is still good for having a way to connect both SATA and PATA (IDE) hard drives.

Pros: Quite frankly, I installed this motherboard and was getting intermittent SATA HDD read errors. “Operating System” not found etc. Well, it angered me because I had it sold and it needed to be delivered & so I ”One Day” shipped another MB to myself finding the same problem happen… The reason I jumped the conclusion (SATA controller being the problem) was because some idiot said this was a problem with this MB in the ratings so it was the 1st thing I assumed was wrong with my MB. I was wrong! He probably was too. When all else fails folks, read the book. Oops. FIRST thing you are instructed to do on page 4-3 is set the “HDD pre-delay” in the bios (6 sec worked ok) so the processor has time to initialize the SATA HDD or you will get an HDD non-existing error. BY BAD. Been doing this 26 years since MS-DOS 2.11. I guess an old dog can be humbled occasionally too. ;-)

Cons: none,

Other Thoughts: I use the 1-5 egg ratings when looking for new hardware, and am finding it less and less useful. Many times I read the complaints and chuckle at some of the moronic comments while the vendor gets bad publicity from someone who doesn’t know what their talking about. So if you kids are new at this, rate yourself as an amateur. Just because your hands fit the keyboard, you can type, or change a stick of ram doesn’t mean you know anything. Work out your issues first before you criticize too harshly. You might learn something.

Also, don’t complain about features you don't have or don't complain about the price when you order something. Ratings should be on quality, not price or features. If you want features, order a board that has them. If you don’t like the price, then don’t buy it. Ratings should always be about quality and service not about shoulda-coulda-woulda.

Pros: $40 off quad combo deal. Works fine once all drivers are installed.

Cons: My only real issue with this mobo is that the driver disc is not very intuitive compared to other manufacturers. Usually there is an all-in-one installation app that will update all of the drivers. I found myself manually installing most of the drivers for both XP and Vista (dual boot).

Pros: This board is relatively unique in using a recent chip set while still supporting legacy hardware that I needed like a parallel port and up to 4 IDE drives. It works fine with Windows XP, a 3 GHz E8400 Wolfdale CPU, 2 G of Kingston DDR800 memory (KVR800D2N5K2/2G) and a Kingwin 450-watt (ABT-450MM) power supply. CPU-Z shows that the memory and front-side bus run at full speed. Although I am not into overclocking, this board has overclock options of +5%, +10%, +15%, and +20%. CPU-Z shows that the busses all move up in speed and I saw no problem overclocked +20% but set it back and have been running without overclocking.

Cons: Note that this board is NOT a raid board. If you want that pay $5 more and get the C2SBA+II. This board has the ICH9 southbridge and you need ICH9R for raid.

The install CD setup will not run except on this motherboard, but you need a floppy with the ITE IDE driver to install Windows XP! So, either go into a subfolder of the CD and directly run the floppy creation program (which you can do on another computer) or download the driver from Supermicro. At the beginning of the install process hit F6 when asked if you have other drivers. Note that Windows install will go on for a bit as if it ignored your request but it will eventually ask for the driver floppy(s). I created two floppies as requested by the manual - one for the ITE IT8212 and one for ICH9R southbridge (which we really don't have - we have ICH9 on this board). The install later asked for the ITE floppy again but not the ICH9R so it probably was not really needed.

Pros: Well made; Straight forward setup; Running Linux (various desktop and server) - no problems with any of them. Q6600, Nvidia Quadro, 4GB, MB SATA w. software RAID 0. SuperMicro recommends *not* flashing BIOS which is a testament to their QC.

Cons: Does not allow mixing memory speeds (my old board allowed this with DDR2 667 + DDR2 800; this board will not boot with that mix).

Other Thoughts: Not a gamer board, but great when you need a good solid MB that just works and is well made and well documented.

Pros: A good motherboard overall. Lots of quality server features for a decent price, plus support for many of the latest components. Running a Celeron 420 (64-bit) and 2 GB DDR800 on mine.

Cons: The ITE IT8212 IDE (parallel ATA) controller is pretty much useless in Linux if you have a hard drive connected to it. The system hard locks upon loading certain modules. OpenSolaris won't boot, even with no IDE hard drive attached. I ordered a PCI Express SATA controller so that I can have 6 SATA ports and disable the onboard IDE controller, which hopefully will solve all my problems.

Other Thoughts: The IDE controller supposedly is a fairly capable RAID controller, but I don't care about that aspect and haven't tested it. I intend to use ZFS with OpenSolaris or Linux software RAID.

I have learned my lesson: IDE is dead garbage and stay away from it.

Pros: Board has lots of newer and older options. Has standard style PCI slots as well as a PCI Express 1x and 16x slots. Can go up to 8GB of RAM and can use Core2Duo and Xeon Dual Core processors

Cons: None so far.