Review on ASUS WS C246 PRO ATX Motherboard for 8th Generation Intel CPUs - ECC DDR4, M.2, Server Workstation by Terry West

This board built a Debian/Ubuntu/Mint machine for photo editing, storage and a lightweight virtualization host that can bridge the gap between some legacy -Hardware and newer device world is the last of my big box PCs. Selected configuration: 16 GB RAM and 8th gen i7 processor, Samsung EVO M.2 SSD boot device, and this board with the flash BIOS update loaded initially (the board shipped with a very outdated BIOS). The BIOS has an amazing array of customization options that are more complex than friendly-looking graphics and mouse support. With this I was able to get an Adaptec RAID card (now called Microsemi) to boot into the third PCI slot for migration, which I later removed. The performance of embedded Ethernet devices and even video for business graphics or non-gaming applications. Crisp and light with Ubuntu 18 Bionic Beaver. All devices work with sound via Wi-Fi and hard drive. Most of the issues I've encountered are related to permissions or configuration. The built-in hot-swappable SATA 6Gb/s ports are sufficient for JBODs or software mirror sets (mdraid) on Linux, so I boot and root on an M.2 drive and then handle large removable drives as "almost a line" and fuse. In the end, I took a good graphics card that I installed for the first time to use on another computer, since the built-in one is great for sorting photos on a 4K monitor. The board does have a USB-C connector, but only (yes, only) 10 Gbps. So while it's not as fast for external transfers without an additional card as the new Mac Mini (January 2019), it's still very fast compared to previous systems. I was concerned that this board would focus on Xeon processors, which I'd rather just use on a multi-die board, but there's no problem running an 8th gen i7. No performance or compatibility issues with QEMU on this board. Seven hundred dollars for the board, memory, and processor mix is more than many people would pay to install Ubuntu, but I wanted to see if I would be willing to give up the Apple world like I did from the PC when I changed my daily driver many years ago. I have a few new Apples, some very fast and reliable PCs, and a fleet of old Linux rogues, virtual and physical. In some cases, Linux boxes feel better, do more of the things I care about, and allow me to uninstall programs I don't need. With this board, the Linux world really feels like a good everyday driver to me, not a workhorse. All in all, this is a very flexible board for those who are migrating and building the last of their toys in a larger form factor. Performance is better but very similar to the i7 NUC I have, except this one is expandable in many ways. You won't need big cases and drives and maybe not that big graphics cards in the future, but for now it's a really powerful and easily convertible rig. It's getting harder and harder to find a board with SATA ports, expansion slots, or multiple LAN chips (it has Intel LAN) without dealing with big, noisy dedicated servers. This board meets the needs of the average builder, corporate modeler, or businessman (or maybe a photographer sorting photos on a budget). Originally I was planning to use Fedora in this build but in the beginning I had a boot problem so I switched to Mint/Ubuntu and am very happy about it.