Question Looking for a good X79 motherboard

[MC Freak]

As we've got a couple of projects in our future that involve legacy "abandonware," I'm looking for a good example of an Intel X79 "HEDT" main board to build a Win XP x86 machine and (later) a Win 7 x64 machine with. I'm hoping to find some folks who've actually built and/or used a machine like this to get some recommendations.

Thank you kindly for your time.

 

[Lutfij]

Aliexpress would be your avenue. Either that or Ebay. The sad thing with Aliexpress would be that the generic, non branded X79 boards will have little to zero after sales support, i.e, their BIOS. Ebay, you need to purchase with a grain of salt and be careful not to buy boards that are listed as for parts.

What else have you pieced together for your build?

 

[thestryker]

To add to the above sometimes you can find marketplace sellers on Newegg who will have older/used boards and may have better return policies.

 

[MC Freak]

Aliexpress would be your avenue. Either that or Ebay. The sad thing with Aliexpress would be that the generic, non branded X79 boards will have little to zero after sales support, i.e, their BIOS. Ebay, you need to purchase with a grain of salt and be careful not to buy boards that are listed as for parts.

What else have you pieced together for your build?

We've got a project on our hands that involves proprietary legacy abandonware that was written for Win XP x86. We received a mobo for the project and - although we got the mobo to run XP Pro SP3 x86 (on our ESD test mat) - it turned out to be physically damaged, which limited our ability to employ more than one SSD and, long story short, we need as much transfer grunt and space (for very large files) as we can get, so we need another mobo with as many SATA 3 sockets and USB 3.0 ports as possible.

We have more than one SSD, some DDR3-1600 RAM, an EVGA 850W PSU and a case that's more than big enough for an e-ATX board. We do not, however, have a CPU for a potential X79 project. I was thinking that a durable mobo would be a good place to start, which is what brought me here. In short, I'm looking for a durable XP-x86-capable mobo that can give us as much functionality for large file transfers as possible.

Thank you kindly for asking.

 

[thestryker]

You're in a somewhat hard position due to the age of the hardware in question. A good used board would probably be better than one of the ones out of china, but finding one can be really hard. Only warning I'd give towards older boards is that it may be very hard to find BIOS files for Intel branded motherboards because they took these down after shuttering the business.

There's recommendations here that should give you an idea of where to start for likely used boards:

Six $200-$260 LGA 2011 Motherboards, Reviewed

We know that Intel's X79 Express platform hosts the fastest desktop processors in the company's portfolio. But can it be made more affordable? We round up the least-expensive $200-$260 motherboards to determine how much you have to give up for cheap X79.

www.tomshardware.com

Seven $260-$320 X79 Express Motherboards, Reviewed

With 40 lanes of PCIe 3.0 connectivity to host all of our high-bandwidth devices, LGA 2011 certainly qualifies as a premium processor interface. Today we examine seven X79-based motherboards that offer high-end features at a more palatable price.

www.tomshardware.com

Ultimate X79? Five $320+ LGA 2011 Motherboards, Reviewed

Our flagship motherboard comparison announcement was answered with an interesting selection of models, along with a bunch of “not ready yet” responses. Today we examine a few samples from companies bold enough to step up to the plate during launch week.

www.tomshardware.com