First time build mobo questions

[Medwynd]

I broke this out of my original post located here:

https://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=44241.0

 

I think that post had too many questions in it so am moving the relevant mobo portion to the correct forum.

 

I am all over the place on this with people running all sorts of setups.  Some using server motherboards some using desktops motherboards.

 

My own requirements are that I clearly would like enough SATA ports, ECC is more of a nice to have, and vt-d support would be nice as well, low power draw.

I think I might be missing what some of the advantages are of the server motherboards.  Is it mostly for the support of ECC RAM?  Are there other features I am not considering?

 

I could use something like an ASRock Z97 Extreme6 which has 10 x SATA 6Gb/s ports, supports LGA1150 chips, and is only 110$ after rebate.  I could also add more sata ports in the future if needed.

The con of this motherboard is its 52W power draw when idle.

 

The sata connectors are:

6 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors by Intel Z97

2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors by ASMedia ASM1061

1 x SATA Express 10 Gb/s Connector

1 x M.2_SSD (probably will never be needed in this rig)

 

ASRock Z97 Extreme6 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157500

 

On the server motherboard side the most common seem to be:

ASRock E3C226D2I and the ASRock E3C224D4I-14S.

The con of the E3C224D4I-14S is that it is an extended mini ITX board, the pros are it can support 12 drives, 6 fan controllers, and up to 32GB of ECC ram.