The workstation server market is one that has been neglected in the mainstream technical media. Yes there are a few “upper-end” sites that cover the workstation arena but they tend be a little snobby at times and almost always talk over the heads of the average consumer. So we are going to try and bring some of that talk to you in plain English. To kick things off we have a very nice product. This is the first Dual socket 1366 motherboard in a standard ATX package. It has been brought to you by the Asus Work Station team. These guys are a very talented bunch and have made some workstation products that can even compete head to head with some of the Republic of Games boards that Asus has. So let’s introduce to you the Asus Z8NA-D6C.
As tested the Z8NA-D6C will run you about $650. If you want the optional MIMO audio card you will have to tack on an extra $20. These prices are actually very good for a dual CPU motherboard. The additional advantages of being a standard ATX form factor, dual Intel LAN ports, onboard video with its own RAM, also add to the value. In short the Z8NA-D6C is almost a steal at this price when you are thinking of building a server or a professional level workstation. By reducing your cost here you can get better CPUs, more memory and a few extras.
Conclusion -The Z8NA is a flexible product. Asus has made a good decision offering this board with different levels of support. The D6C (the one we tested) was a great combination of performance, support and price. Even if you go for the D6 with its LSI SAS RAID controller you are only spending about $50 more which is less than many X58 motherboards on the market. The optional audio card is also a good idea; if you are buying this to run as a server then you would not need it and one on the board would only get in the way. The built-in ASpeed GPU and its associated 8MB of video RAM is also perfect for most server needs. It gives you a method for display without taking away from system RAM or forcing you to spend more money on an add-in GPU. On the performance side, our selection of the lower powered Xeons (2.4GHz) hurt us in many of the normal desktop and consumer tests we run. However we saw the Z8NA-D6C and our Xeon L5530s shine in many of the professional applications. Oddly we also saw excellent gaming performance with this board and an HD5870 GPU. Power consumption was surprisingly low for a board with two 1366 CPUs and a 5870 GPU running. Overall I liked the Z8NA-D6C; I can see it working as a great workstation board when space is at a premium. I can also envision this part as the starting block for a good server possibly VMware, Exchange or SQL. It has a lot of what you do need and managed to leave off many things you do not.
