INTEL SERVER BOARD S5000PSL

So newegg had deal on rosewill RSV-R4000 for 49.99 I got over charge by newegg by 30 so I am fighting thm on it, but that is different story.

So I want to build esxi capable server. It seems that refurbished INTEL SERVER BOARD S5000PSL  goes for 34.99 on ebay and seems to have lots of suport from intel. Also matched pair of xeon 5320 goes for $30 so. I wonder if any one has experience with esxi and motherboard and knows if

ioomu and cards reasigment is supported ? Any xeons for 771 socket that are good bank for bucks?

So newegg had deal on rosewill RSV-R4000 for 49.99 I got over charge by newegg by 30 so I am fighting thm on it, but that is different story.

So I want to build esxi capable server. It seems that refurbished INTEL SERVER BOARD S5000PSL  goes for 34.99 on ebay and seems to have lots of suport from intel. Also matched pair of xeon 5320 goes for $30 so. I wonder if any one has experience with esxi and motherboard and knows if

ioomu and cards reasigment is supported ? Any xeons for 771 socket that are good bank for bucks?

Errr.. honestly. that board is pretty old at this point.

A few notes about it from my experience with those...

The PCIe slots are V1 (Gen1) not V2. not a huge problem. just don't expect a SAS cards to run very fast. The slots are limited to 4 GB/s total bandwidth per 8x slot. 2GB/s total bandwidth for the 4x slots.

It does not have VT-d so no hardware passthough.

it uses FBDIMMs, those are pretty expensive these days for new. something like $100 for a 4GB stick. not to mention not super fast by todays standards

those Xeons are like little space heaters. they are not very efficient electricity wise.

if you are running Free version of ESXi, it is limited to a single CPU, this also cuts the boards ram in half. so the board tops out at 16GB for a single CPU as I recall.

what you save on the cost of the board and CPU, you have to eat back in ram costs. this will bring it back up to the price of a modern modern board/CPU/RAM Combo

I would not get it for ESXi if you plan to run a storage guest. unless you don't mind setting up RDM for every drive (I don't recommended it).

For a test lab, it will do fine if you can source the ram cheap. for production, I would avoid it.

This is assuming it is on the HCL, I didn't even look...

ioomu = AMD term, Intel uses VT-d to describe that feature. as stated, no. this board predates that technology.

It does however have VT-i, so it can run Virtual hardware. But, no passthough.

EDIT:

I am not sure how the title has to do with motherboard sourcing?

I run unRaid+ on a s5000psl. You can get a single 5148 Xeon pretty cheap, it runs at 40 watts. It does have 6 SATA ports and an internal USB port.  I got it as a complete white box server with a 3Ware 12 port SATA card (unRaid does not like it much), a 640W power supply, a Chenbro rm31212b, dual 5160 Xeons and 16GB of FB-DIMMS. I replaced the 5160s for the 5148 and 3Ware with a SuperMicro SATA. It hums, more like whines (the Chenbros fans), along just fine now. I wouldn't shy away from it if you can get a deal off of CL or eBay  but I wouldn't pay full retail for it either.