This is what I have been looking for in a file server. Thanks for the case insight as well, the Lian Li will fit the bill. Impressive stock performance. I am unclear on the cpu cooler though.. A after market cpu cooling solution will not offer better results?

I'd recommend testing mini-itx boards without discrete graphics, as that's the normal configuration; heavy gaming is not the typical mini-itx use. You should get <30W idle power consumption with this board, even around 20W with an efficient PSU. Power consumption tends to be a major advantage of Intel boards.

I think the fan only running @ ~300 rpm with high CPU temps is a little underplayed (even apologetic) in this review, I would not touch this overpriced/under featured itx board in a fit when compared to the Zotac or even better the world beating GA H55N-USB3 m-itx board which I am hoping X-bit will review in the near future

It's nice that it had the H57 for raid, but I only saw 4 sata connectors for the 4 hot swap drives in the Chenbro case... where does the DVD drive plug into?

I have spent a while looking for a reasonably cost effective NAS system as I have 4 x 1.5TB drives just waiting to be set up. I have looked at pre built appliances such as those from QNAP, but even to get simple things such as WOL means looking at something like the the QNAP TS-439 Pro is around £600.

So, I have looked to see if I could build something similar for less money and this MB seems to go some way to achieve that. If only there was a similar board that came with dual Gb Ethernet ports as I have read that the limiting factor is the Ethernet connection.

The Chenbro case seems perfect although it only has a 120W PSU - I wonder is this will be man enough to drive an i2 and 4 drives. There is a slightly bigger case with a 180W, but the price rises and it also seems to be scarce. I echo the comment posted by CSMR and would like to see these board test using the graphics on board (utilising Clarkdale processors?) as I think most would be utilised in this configuration, whether it be as specific appliances such as NAS, or simple HTPC front ends.

In any case, I wonder the benefit of running the on-board RAID in an OS such as Windows 2008 against a purpose build file storage OS, such as FreeNAS (assuming this board would be supported) or UnRAID? Help or tests showing comparisons of all these types of systems would be interesting