Xeons on standard motherboards

[Platinum]

So basically I was thinking of upgrading the lan box to a bit of a Lan beast / Folding beast, so decided that 8 threads were required (BigAdv) and that the Sandy Bridge i7's should have the grunt without overclocking and just using Turbo to do the Bigadv cores.
Then I thought what about the S1155 Xeons?, Had a look at the product range and came across the E3-1230, 200MHz slower than the 2600K but lower power, no GPU and about £50 cheaper than the i7.
The socket is the same, the CPU is pretty much the same as a i7 minus the GPU, only thing I can think that would stop it working in a standard motherboard is Bios / EFI support.

So what I am asking is, anyone tried a Sandy Bridge Xeon in a standard motherboard? results?, Looking to put one in a ITX mobo

[oolon]

Here are some boards.

Mostly available boards are matx rather than mitx there are some nice offerings from Supermicro and Tyan. Asus, Msi and Gigabyte are also making boards. BTW many of the boards do not have sound built in, so your need usb or a slot for that.

[malfunction]

The E3 1220 is cheaper still:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel...che-80w-retail

Slightly lower clock speed but still the full 8MB cache (vs 6MB on the equivalent i5 CPUs)

Very tempting if they do work in standard S1155 boards (I did the same with a S775 Xeon that I'm currently running...)

Edit: no HT though so the E3 1230 / 2600 may be a better bet for long term value or just the i5 2500K in that price range...

[Platinum]

Looked at the E3 1220 but afaik it doesnt have Hyperthreading.
On a technical level I cant see why the CPU wouldnt work in a standard mobo, I think it must just be bios / efi support.

[Golden Dragoon]

From the looks of it they have locked multi's so wouldn't be any good if you plan to overclock.

[Platinum]

Nah no plans to overclock, this is for a SFF lanbeast.

[Platinum]

Ok cant find anything in ITX, icro ATX could be a option, quick look and I cant find anything other than a server board, anyone know of any consumer level boards that take Xeons?