ASUS WS C422 SAGE/10G LGA2066 ECC DDR4 M.2 U.2 C422 ATX Motherboard for Intel Xeon W-Series Processor

The motherboard is excellent and provides the same overclocking features as ASUS's gaming options (The bios looks virtually identical except that it's blue instead of red).The caveats I mentioned:The fan connectors are placed a little differently than the other ASUS boards so you may need to route cables differently.There is a power header to power the pcie slots that uses a connector that most desktop/gaming power supplies don't include. This power connector can be ignored with no negative effects. (looking at the motherboard picture, you can see if between the first pcie slot and the CPU socket near the I/O ports.The Pcie slots are not all x16. Only the grey ones are. (slots 1, 3, 5, 7) The black ones (2,4,6) are only x8.Overall I'm really enjoying this motherboard. Having 7 full x16 length (even if 3 are x8) slots makes it very handy when trying to use a variety of cards with different connectors.

I have been working on my workstation (WS) build since the end of February 2020. The components I am working with are the following:(1) INTEL XEON W-2255 (19.25M Cache, 3.70 GHz)(4) Crucial Technology 64GB 288-Pin LRDIMM DDR4 (PC4-21300) Memory Module, 2666 MT/S Speed, ECC(1) ASUS WS C422 SAGE/10G(1) Noctua NH-U12A, Premium CPU Cooler with High-Performance Quiet NF-A12x25 PWM Fans (120mm, Brown)(3) EVGA RTX 2080 Graphics Card(1) EVGA SuperNOVA 1600 T2, 80+ TITANIUM 1600W(4) Seagate IronWolf ST10000VN0008 10TB 7200 RPM 256MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drives(2) Samsung SSD 860 EVO 2TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E2T0B/AM)(1) Samsung (MZ-V7E1T0BW) 970 EVO SSD 1TB - M.2 NVMe, SSD with V-NAND TechnologyI currently have been sitting on all these components for the last month due to this motherboard! Let me tell you it is A LOT of money and wasted time! I will be fair though, the COVID-19 has played some part in the shipping back and forth and support provided. For example, ASUS customer support DOES NOT have (at this time) phone support for their MOBOs. Only chat forums currently, and if you have done any Google searches for the level of support a customer receives from ASUS, it is very limited and NOT that good. I will confirm this point... However, if you are looking to build an AI/ML workstation like I am, and have purchased the Xeon W-2255 for the CPU of choice, your MOBOs are extremely limited. Which brings me to the reason why I have not given up on ASUS, the MOBO is more capable (on specs so far) than the completion (Gigabyte - MW51-HP0 and Supermicro - X11SRA). I have yet to test the system out for myself, because I have had three (3) separate ASUS WS C422 SAGE/10G MOBO in my possession over the last month due to the following issues with the MOBO:1st MOBO - Faulty chip sets/components and fried the MOBO, returned for a refund due to the defective nature2nd MOBO - Would not boot and MOBO displayed Q code 'dF' (I'll come back to this later). I contacted the ASUS customer service number and was informed that chat was my only option. While trying to explain the issue, the "service tech" wanted me to RMA the MOBO back to ASUS for service, instead I opted for another refund from Amazon.com and then proceeded to purchase the board from newegg.com (thinking the boards would be from a different lot).3rd MOBO - I received the board and installed all the components, turned it on and yet again... 'dF' is being displayed on the Q code. At this point I am at loss and I begin to Google the heck out of Q code 'dF' and finding only a couple, and I mean a couple references for the code. The only one that actually sparked a troubleshooting solution was from EVGA's website: https://forums.evga.com/X299-Dark-will-not-post-error-code-dF-m3019553.aspx which then I began to look to the BIOS settings. However, without the ability to POST it is difficult to update, and the manual for the ASUS WS C422 SAGE/10G is not good at all! So I began the journey down the route with ASUS customer service chat, and long story short I was able to get them to escalate the ticket, and 24-48 hours later I received a phone call from a human (that spoke broken English). I explained to him that I attempted to update the BIOS using the ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 update process without luck. The following are the steps (directly from the manual) for the process:ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3The ASUS CrashFree BIOS 3 utility is an auto recovery tool that allows you to restore the BIOS file when it fails or gets corrupted during the updating process. You can restore a corrupted BIOS file using the motherboard support DVD or USB flash drive that contains the BIOS file.Recovering the BIOS1. Turn on the system2. Insert the motherboard support DVD to the optical drive, or the USB flash drive containing the BIOS file to the USB port.3. The utility automatically checks the devices for the BIOS file. When found, the utility reads the BIOS file and enters ASUS EZ Flash 3 automatically.4. The system requires you to enter BIOS setup to recover the BIOS setting. To ensure system compatibility and stability, we recommend that you press <F5> to load default BIOS values.The Service Tech had me run through the process, yet again (with him) and this is where the Ah-Ha moment happens... Step 1 = turn on the system, this means ONLY the PSU, NOT pressing the power button on the MOBO! If you push the motherboard power button then you are attempting to POST the system and the utility will not auto update. So what I learned from this process is if you purchase a newly released Q4/2019 Intel Xeon W-22xx variant, the motherboard NEEDs to be updated, and the only way to update it is with this process.1. Download the current BIOS and follow the steps in the manual for this process, it is really clear for this part, but be aware you MUST use a USB 3.0 flash drive, a 2.0 will not work.2. Insert said USB 3.0 into the MOBO3. Turn on the MOBO - meaning the PSU only4. Press and hold the BIOS Flashback button (for three (3) green light flashes, then release)5. Wait up to 5 minutes for the complete update to finish, and the green light will turn off.6. Install your components and enjoy... you have been saved about a month of headache and trouble shooting during the COVID-19 pandemic!I will give the MOBO a 4-star review (so far), only because the competition does not have the same feature as this board, and I am not rating the customer support in this process. Due to the fact that if you are buying this board you have probably built a couple of computers before and know/have some troubleshooting background and understand how systems operate. I have built many systems before and this one will defiantly go down in my memory banks. Which is why I am writing this lengthy review, because I don't want anyone else having the same issues. The Xeon W-21xx variant is almost double the price of the Xeon W-22xx series! The Xeon W-22xx has way better capabilities than the W-21xx and for what I intend the use case for this system I would rather pay the $800 for the Xeon W-2255 chip and $800 for the ASUS WS C422 SAGE/10G MOBO for a total of $1,600 vs the $3,000+ price tag for the Xeon W-3175 CPU (plus a motherboard that cost almost $2k). Once I complete my AI/ML build I may come back and change the rating, up or down after I begin to use the system.

As a workstation with plenty of expansion options, this is an awesome motherboard. Multiple SLI/crossfire options (if you are GPU based) along with 2x M.2 and 2X U.2 connections (4X nVME super fast drives), your workstation can store and access super fast whatever you add to it. SATA connections add an additional 6X SSD/HDD drives (or optical also) and you can not complain about storage or peripheral connections. With one USB 3.1 type C internal and one USB 3.0 internal connection, your PC can have front access to the fast interfaces (via your PC case or added in front panel connections). Thunderbolt connection....YES (if you choose with an additional expansion card). VROC support...yes....but issues. This is the one downfall I have and could be from lack of experience with VROC or it just is not as easily achieved as it seems. I used the ASUS Hyper 4X m.2 expansion card (V2) with 4x Samsung 250GB 960 EVO drives and an Intel VROC standard key and could not get the evo drives to show up in the bios. The ASUS card recognized all 4 drives (all 4 lights active green). I followed the directions via the motherboard instructions and the V2 card instructions on bios settings and never could get the drives to show up. I ended up sending back the Asus card and the VROC key and went with a single 970 Evo Plus boot drive (fast enough).Second downfall of the motherboard is the price. Way too expensive. I lucked out and got an open box/used one for half the price through Amazon (turned out to be just an open box item never used, you can tell by the first CPU installed and feel the pins set as you secure the CPU into the socket via the retension brackets). Is there enough extra additional hardware on this motherboard compared to the ASUS C422 Pro to justify the double price, I don't think so. If you have the extra cash and are looking for a long term workstation with a server quality storage and stability quality, it is worth the extra costs.In the end, I love it. I have every drive option used and it doubles as a CAD workstation, video editing PC, and storage server simultaneously.

I have many of these at work and overall a good board ... but be careful with any BIOS upgrades ... if you you upgrade and find it buggy, some Einstein at ASUS thought it was a good idea to not allow downgrading BIOS to a previous version, so we had to return boards and replace them because of that. And mind you folks, ASUS support is really the very worst, totally useless. For this reason, we have decided from now on to go back to Intel server boards.

It's a real server board I think it's ecc only sorry guys read up online support channel