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You'll notice a major difference in the Supermicro X8DTi-F motherboard when comparing it to other potential motherboards because it has support for up to two processors. In addition, the design choices employed by Intel and Supermicro allow for a unique blend of versatility, utility, and ease of processing. The X8DTI-F uses the Intel 5520 (Tylersburg) chipset, with dual 1366 LGA sockets that support the 64-bit Intel Xeon processor 5600 series (Westmere) and the Intel Xeon Processor 5500 series (Nehalem-EP). While there are a number of server boards that provide similar support, the difference is that that this board is built on an extended ATX form factor. With a number of component slots, this means that the motherboard is compatible with consumer cases and can serve double duty as both a server and a personal computing system.The specifications back up this argument in utility, standing as a clear win for any hardware enthusiast. The ATX form holds two rear port and two onboard USB ports with an additional four internal headers available for device connections. More importantly, unlike many other motherboards destined for servers, this Supermicro board has four PCI-Express slots. It contains one standard x16, along with two x8 and one x4 that allow for additional hardware cards as needed. Although Intel built in an integrated graphics chip, the Matrox G200eW, the inclusion of multiple PCI-E slots allows for any top of the line current graphics card to be inserted without preventing the addition of other PCI-E reliant chips like an HD audio card.Outside of the second CPU, the major feature that allows for a concurrent personal and server processing system is the memory. This board holds 192GB of ECC memory, which supports single-bit error correction and double-bit error checking. This provides a huge pool of DDR3 SDRAM. Additionally, there are six serial ATA ports managed by the ICH10R controller, providing 6 SATA connections at 3.0 Gb/s. There is also native support for Raid 0, 1, and 5, 10 on Windows, or 0, 1, and 10 on Linux, allowing for amounts of memory unaffected by individual drive death. For those requiring serious backward compatibility, there is both a floppy disk controller available for connection as well as two 33Mhz PCI slots.Arguably, one of the biggest advantages the Supermicro X8DTi-F brings to a computer is the provision of two Gigabit ethernet ports that make building home LAN networks a breeze. A dedicated Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) port also allows remote management without requiring any intermediary devices. It also ships with a Plug and Play BIOS that supports USB keyboard inputs, native KVM support, and has SuperDoctor pre-installed. The health-monitoring suite allows you to use a number of ways to keep track of your computer, and with eight four-pin fan headers, the opportunity to set custom cooling protocols using tachometer status or even to control for low decibel optimization. Ultimately, this motherboard brings exceptional flexibility with dual Xeon processors, a standard ATX chassis, and all the slots and connections you could ever need.