Criteria:
* Must probably be L775, as I've been eyeing the C2D E7xxx range for the CPU
* Must be in a sensible price range, no suggestions of 200+ USD SuperMicro and Tyan offerings please
* Must have either ICH10 or ICH9 disk controllers
* Must have 6 native SATA ports (more is ok, less is not ok)
* passive chipset cooling is preferred (and low noise in general)
* 1 Gigabit NIC is enough for me, as long as it works well in FreeBSD
* If the board has some kind of onboard video capable of outputting DVI, so that I don't have to hunt for a VGA monitor or an additional videocard any time I happen to need direct video output, that's a plus
* I don't care about sound, at all
And finally, it should also be a motherboard with reasonable availability, it seems that a lot of boards which fit the criteria and have been considered great are currently no longer available from anywhere.
* Must probably be L775, as I've been eyeing the C2D E7xxx range for the CPU
* Must be in a sensible price range, no suggestions of 200+ USD SuperMicro and Tyan offerings please
* Must have either ICH10 or ICH9 disk controllers
* Must have 6 native SATA ports (more is ok, less is not ok)
* passive chipset cooling is preferred (and low noise in general)
* 1 Gigabit NIC is enough for me, as long as it works well in FreeBSD
* If the board has some kind of onboard video capable of outputting DVI, so that I don't have to hunt for a VGA monitor or an additional videocard any time I happen to need direct video output, that's a plus
* I don't care about sound, at all
And finally, it should also be a motherboard with reasonable availability, it seems that a lot of boards which fit the criteria and have been considered great are currently no longer available from anywhere.