As a PC aficionado since my teenage years, I've always been on the prowl for hardware with the best bang for my buck, and this habit has devolved into an obsession after I stepped into the dazzling, CLI-heavy world of home labs. Whether it’s SBCs, mini-PCs, NAS units, or even old systems, I like scouring the web for the best deals on devices I could integrate into my computing arsenal.

That said, I always do thorough research when taking out my wallet for shiny PC parts – especially for the more expensive components that cost an arm and a leg. For instance, I have a list of niche features that I consider borderline essential for server systems, regardless of whether it’s an enterprise-grade mobo or its modern, consumer-oriented equivalent.

Debug LEDs

Actually, it’s something I want on every motherboard

I might get some flak for saying this, but debug LEDs are an amazing utility for troubleshooting. While they were a lot more prevalent when I was a broke teenager who’d gaze longingly at server hardware, it’s a real buzzkill how manufacturers tend to restrict them to their high-end offerings these days. Even for normal gaming PCs, I always try to find motherboards featuring debug LED indicators (as MSI calls them) or, better yet, tiny screens capable of displaying error codes, just so I don’t have to whip out all sorts of tools trying to test the other expensive components of my build.

And that’s before I talk about server-oriented hardware, which is the Wild West of compatibility issues. Heck, the debug codes on my X99 server motherboard’s built-in screen are the reason why I was able to troubleshoot RAM and GPU issues on my Proxmox node – problems that would’ve otherwise taken hours of tears, grime, and pain to detect, let alone fix.

At least four RAM slots

Bonus points if they are compatible with ECC memory

Adding more RAM is one of the best upgrades you can make to a server, and I don’t just mean a mere 8GB memory stick. If you’re planning to run heavy virtualization and containerization workloads on your server nodes like I do, you may find your tinkering machines running out of RAM. That’s because VMs (and even containers, for that matter) feast on memory like there’s no tomorrow, especially if you’ve got multiple GUI distributions running inside your virtual machines.

Since I’ve already got a fleet of virtual guests running on my primary workstation, I really appreciate the extra memory slots available on the motherboard. And while this feature may not be essential to the majority of home labbers out there, ECC support is another facility to have in a motherboard, especially if you’re planning to use the system as a Network-Attached Storage server.

IPMI support

To simplify remote management

Barring type-2 hypervisor shenanigans, I almost always use a dedicated web UI or an SSH client to manage my server after installing the operating system. However, there are times when I need to pull out my CrowView Note 14 and a couple of cables to access my workstation. Maybe I ended up modifying the wrong config file and brought my home lab down. Or perhaps, I just want to tinker with a different bare-metal platform.

IPMI becomes a godsend in these cases. For the uninitiated, Intelligent Platform Management Interface is a facility that lets you access the underlying hardware of a server PC over a remote connection – even when the node lacks an operating system! Not only is it great for troubleshooting, but it also lets me monitor my hardware statistics from another system, making it quite a multi-purpose utility.

Plenty of PCIe and SATA ports

To interface all the I/O devices lying in my arsenal

Although graphics cards are the most popular PCIe devices in the gaming ecosystem, there are a ton of cool gizmos you can pair with the high-speed interface. There are sound cards for audiophiles who don’t want to rely on built-in audio chips, HBAs for data hoarders, and NICs for folks who want spare network ports on their home servers. You’ve also got SATA, NVMe, and (on particularly old systems) PATA ports for interfacing storage devices to your workstation.

While most ATX motherboards include a decent set of PCIe slots and storage ports, it’s easy to run out of them. My aged server motherboard includes two x16 PCIe Gen 3 connections alongside a couple of x4 slots, while the old PC I use for highly experimental projects has just as many PCIe slots, except the x16 connections support Gen 4 speeds. Truth be told (and I apologize if this sounds too elitist), they are nowhere near enough for my needs. That’s because I prefer passing my PCIe devices to my virtual machines.

Robust IOMMU implementation

SR-IOV support is the cherry on top

While we’re on the subject of GPU passthrough, I need to talk about IOMMU and why it’s important for a server motherboard to support this utility. The Input-Output Memory Management Unit is responsible for mapping the virtual address of an I/O device to its physical memory address and isolating it from the more critical sections of RAM. It may not be something you’ll use on a general-purpose PC, but it’s essential for enabling PCI passthrough on virtualization platforms.

I’ve passed PCIe devices on Proxmox using five different motherboards – four consumer-oriented and one X99 enterprise-grade mobo. Surprisingly, the X99 motherboard gave me the most trouble when enabling PCI passthrough, as its IOMMU support was extremely finicky – to the point where I had to ditch the mobo and switch to an old B450 system when setting up my daily-driver Windows 11 virtual machine. SR-IOV (Single Root I/O Virtualization) is another handy facility to have, as it lets you pass the same PCI device to a handful of virtual guests, be it transcoding-heavy Jellyfin VMs, motion-detecting Frigate systems, or even gaming-oriented setups.

There’s a lot to take in when building your first server

Aside from these features, I also have a couple of other facilities I keep an eye out for when hunting for a new server motherboard. Having faced the hurdles of dealing with an E-ATX motherboard that refuses to slot into any case I own, I always check a mobo’s dimensions before adding it to my cart. Had I written this article two years ago, I would’ve included dual CPU support in the list. But now that I’ve dealt with the excessive energy consumption of my dual Xeon workstation, I’ve grown less fond of mobos with two CPU slots and have started taking power efficiency into consideration even while buying single-processor systems.