Got the Supermicro X10SRL-F Board

Your basic single processor Xeon server/work station Haswell board.  Okay, not so basic...it does allow up to 512 GB RAM, lots of PCIe slots, 10 Sata ports.  But no SAS controller...compared to my initial thoughts, I moved to a more basic version of a more capable set-up.  Also got the Xeon E5-1650 v3 CPU.

One thing I learned or realized with more force is that CPU performance has pretty much stalled out, most of the interesting stuff is storage and low power/mobile.  I'm also getting to play with learning basic IT infrastructure.  Someone should write about the economics/business of this, from a meaningful perspective (most stuff I find isn't to the point or is at best suggestive).  

1. Single socket R3 (LGA 2011) supports

    Intel® Xeon® processor E5-2600 v3
    and E5-1600 v3 family

2. Intel® C612 chipset

3. Up to 512GB ECC DDR4 2133MHz
    LRDIMM; 8x DIMM slots

4. 7x PCI-E slots total:
    2 PCI-E 3.0 x8, 2 PCI-E 3.0 x8 (in x16),
    2 PCI-E 3.0 x4 (in x8) or 1 x8 + 1 x0
    (auto-switch), & 1 PCI-E 2.0 x4 (in x8)

5. Intel® i210 Dual port GbE LAN

6. 10x SATA3 (6Gbps) via C612

7. 1x VGA, 2x COM, 1x TPM

8. 4x USB 3.0 ports, 8x USB 2.0 ports

9. 2x SuperDOM with built-in power