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I selected this MB for a low power draw file/media server build for my home. Just a low cost place to store legally purchased music and video without adding significantly to my electric bill. This motherboard will serve that function well enough for me but it does have limitations. The obsolete ALC887 audio chipset wouldn't be my choice for a HTPC but this isn't an issue for me because I don't plan to hook up speakers or use it for a HTPC. While lacking the latest and greatest audio it's plenty good enough for MP3 playback or even lossless music formats up to 24bit/96khz.

This motherboard includes five internal SATA-3 ports however none of the E350 MBs (so far) seem to include onboard hardware RAID support. To me this a significant flaw of all current E350s but one that I can live with. Most "green" style drives play poorly with RAID5 controllers so I went with a single boot drive and a pair of 3TB green drives and let Windows mirror them. That still leaves room for two... Read more

E35M1-M Pro became the heart of a server using WHS 2011. Selected primarily because it has five 5 6GB sata ports allowing server capacity of 10TB using 2TB drives or 8TB plus an optical drive. Current configuration is 4TB plus optical drive. External esata port allows local backup of media library and shared files. Streams video to networked Sony BR player at 5Mbs, better than DVD but not fast enough for 1080 HD. Can stream data at a rate to support HD video to a networked PC. Server generally operates headless but HDMI output allows use of TV as monitor when needed; this is convenient. Because the onboard video uses part of the RAM, MB has to be populated with 4GB of RAM to install WHS 2011. WHS 2011 requires 2GB memory but the RAM allocated to video reduces a single 2GB module to less than the 2GB required for WHS.

One star deducted because of the limited processing power; it cannot directly stream HD video nor do significant multitasking when streaming at... Read more

I have been loving this motherboard. I have been running arch linux as a home server on this for about a month without any issues. The board has a very clean bios to navigate with lots of options. This guy stays cool and quiet. I am also using it as a home file server with software raid so the 5x sata connectors were a plus. I would recommend this board to someone who wants a cheap, stable, power efficient board and does not need a ton of processing power.

My Recommended use: home server, media center, desktop for web surfing/word processing.