In this video, I want to do an in-depth review of one of my favorite workstation motherboards from the IvyBridge era. This is a rather rare motherboard, and it is the Supermicro X9DA7. If you’ve been with my channel since the beginning, you know that I often showcase rack mount servers like the Dell PowerEdge R series and Supermicro servers. However, over the years while chatting with people who come to my eBay store, I’ve come to realize that many people prefer a home server build using desktop PC form factors. That’s the whole reason behind the videos I made about the HP Z workstations. This got me thinking more and more about components that would make for a great server build in a typical PC case. On top of that, most home servers are primarily storage servers, and this Supermicro X9DA7 fits that bill really well because it has an onboard LSI SAS2308 based controller. So if you want to know more about this motherboard, watch this video until the end, or if you're looking for specific information, use the timestamps below.

Timestamps:
1:21 - Introducing the X9DA7 and decoding the name
2:24 - E-ATX form factor
3:10 - Intel C602 Patsburg platform and supported CPUs
4:36 - Supported Memory / RAM
7:09 - How to choose the right memory
14:14 - PCIe slots
16:57 - PCIe port bifurcation demonstration (doesn't work)
23:39 - Onboard LSI SAS2308 SAS controller
26:16 - I-SATA and S-SATA ports
27:25 - Fan Control
28:38 - USB ports
30:04 - Rear I/O
30:52 - Final thoughts

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