Asus Intel 8th Gen DDR4 HDMI VGA Micro ATX Motherboards (Prime H310M-E R2.0)

This motherboard is extremely affordable. It is suitable for a midrange build, it accepts any ddr4 ram, but the speed will be limited to 2666 Mhz. I am using a 9th gen intel cpu, even though it says 8th gen are supported, but you can check compatibility before buying. There is probably no way to overclock, which I am okay with. The m.2 slot works great for an ssd, but make sure to get an nvme ssd for best results. This motherboard is small, so a good fit for short or mid size cases. I have always considered Asus motherboards to be super reliable, I have had no hardware issues or conflicts.

While I know it's not a true "server" board by any means, I'm currently using this to build a budget home server/NAS and it fit the bill perfectly, in total with 16gb RAM, a 256gb NVMe drive, lower-end power supply, Celeron processor, a 4 port SATA PCIe card, 2 refurbished 4tb HGST Ultrastar drives, plus 2 other drives I already had and a case I bought from a friend, I spent less than $300.Just a quick side note - While it's NOT listed on the official hardware compatibility list, this board does boot and works great with a Celeron G4930! I found this out when I tried to boot it and it wouldn't - looked up the HCL & it wasn't listed - freaked out until I realized, the case power on cable was connected to the wrong pins (maybe it was me, but it has really poor documentation/diagrams) -1 star for tech support.The BIOS is super-simplified, but the Advanced option gives much more flexibility for overclocking and tweaking. Also, one thing I really liked was it lets you do online BIOS updates, straight from the BIOS, a nice feature for a lower end board.One more thing to be aware of, using an NVMe drive renders SATA port #2 non-functional, hence the need for the PCIe SATA card if you want more than 3 extra drives.Currently experimenting with different OS's, but all the flavors of Linux Server I've tried run buttery smooth with this configuration, including R/W to the RAID arrays and NFS transfers and even running multiple services such as Apache2, MySQL, SSH, FTPd and so many more.

Decent Mobo for the price. Works with 9th gen Core I3 9100F right out of the box without bios update. My one gripe with this board is it only has 1 fan header and it is in the most inconveinent location (middle bottom left of board). So you will need to buy a fan splitter if you want to control more than 1 case fan from the bios.

Great board for the price ($56 for Business Prime, at time of purchase), with the M.2 slot (only supports an x2 PCIe 3.0, *not* x4, but if you’re using an AHCI B+M sata-type ssd it doesn’t matter. Also, if you use the M.2 slot then it deactivates one of the four Sata ports) being really convenient, coming with an ingenious plastic plug-and-tug mounting system that I’ve never seen before — so much better than two washers and a screw.Biggest complaint was that the DIMM slots were *very* tight, had a stiff time getting my ddr4 sticks in and out — but they do function. Has only two fan headers (one for the CPU cooler and one for a single case fan), but that’s to be expected at this price range. I’m also personally not a big fan of MSI’s UEFI gui but all the functionality is still there.