VMWare ESXi 4.0.0 164009 x86-64 works on the following white box system:

-Intel DP43TF with on board 82567V Ethernet controller
-Intel P43 Express chipset
-LGA775 with Q8200 Intel Core 2 Quad Core CPU
-NBG4310H.86A BIOS ver 0082 with date 5/7/2009
-Corsair XMS2 DDR2 TWIN2x4096-6400C5 4GB RAM
-eVGA GeFforce 8400GS PCI Express 16 video card
-standard SATA hard disk drives.
-Needed to change SATA mode to ACHI in BIOS
-Needed to update BIOS to the version listed above. The out of the box BIOS worked but would crash when shutting down ESXi. (There was an error similar to a blue screen dump or in ESXi's case, pink screen)

Notes:
Originally installed ESXi 3.5 update 4. Everything worked execpt ESXi did not recognize on board 82567V Ethernet controller. Used a 3Com 3c509b card.

Read that ESXi 4.0 supported the 82567V on this site http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/Hardware_support.php

Upgraded to ESXi 4.0 following the directions located here: http://www.vm-help.com/esx40i/ESXi40_upgrade_without_virtualcenter.php

ESXi succesfully upgraded and recognized the 82567V. Only trouble encountered was when the upgrade reached 34%. The upgrade timed out and lost connection. Re-ran the update procedure and it started where it left off and finished successfully.

I also setup up new 'server' using the Intel DP43TF.
I used a Q8400 CPU (2.66ghz Quad core), which supports Intel Virtualization Technology (The Q8200 doesn't), Two Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 500gb SATA Drives, one Liteon PATA DVD drive, 4gb Kingston Value Ram (KVR800D2N6K2/4G) installed in an ANTEC Atlas 550 Server case.

The DP43TF does not have integrated video, so I installed a PCI VGA card from my junk box. After installing the latest BIOS update from Intel (Version 089) and changing the SATA mode to ACHI, I had ESXi 4.0 running in about 10 minutes, with both the onboard NIC and the SATA drives working.
My total cost was a little over $800.

My White box :
CPU -> Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
M/B -> Intel DP43TF ( Bios NBG4310H.86A.0090 )
HDD -> 2 X Western 160 GB SATA II ( ACHI Mode )
DVD -> ASUS
VGA -> Winfast 8600 GT

Next step i want to upgrade my CPU to Q8400 and change My VGA. Because it very lound.

Another successful install using the DP43TF:

CPU -> Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400
M/B -> Intel DP43TF w/ onboard NIC working ( Will get bios version tomorrow )
HDD -> 1 x 320gb Segate SATA ( ACHI Mode )
VGA -> ASUS EN8400GS Silent
DVD -> Samsung SH-S223B
Memory -> 4 x 2gb A Data DDR2 800 sticks
Add-on NIC -> INTEL | EXPI9301CT PCI-e

So far it's been running great, first time using ESXi and I really dig it.

I am wondering if this board works succesfully for PCI pass-through in ESXi 4 (using a compatible processor of course). I am looking at the Q9400 with this board. Has anyone tried a similar setup?

Hi,

I've just built an ESXi 4 Host using this motherboard. The only problem I have is getting the guest VM's onto the network. Did any of you have to do anything extra to get this to work with the onboard NIC?

Issue solved.
I removed the VLAN ID which I had set. Guests now are able to join the network.

Hi

I have used this board with ESX 4.0 with no problems for about a year now.

This weekend, I upgraded the BIOS using the Intel ISO image (very easy, but requires two reboots) from v69 to v106. This upgrade has given me the VT setting in BIOS, which I had not had before although, without it, the board worked fine, even with 64bit guest OSes.

After the BIOS upgrade, I installed 4.1 build 260247, the install was problematic as the ESXi did not see the CDROM (as IDE or SATA in IDE mode), however, I installed the ESXi using CDROM and harddrive in another machine (an HP DC7700), then transfered the hard drive. No problems.

Initially, I ran this from a USB stick and had no local hard drive, just boot to USB and access NFS (FreeNAS) for datastore. The FreeNAS failed on the weekend, hence all the changes, but I can confirm with v106 BIOS, this board works well with local SATA disk in IDE mode or install to and run from Kingston USB 8GB stick.

I used a clone case (Coolermaster) with 350W PSU and it is quiet.

The processor is Intel Q8400 with stock Intel heatsink and fan and it is quieter than my mediacenter.

The SATA RAID is fake/software ICH10 and does not work under ESXi, but I use a single Seagate 1.5TB drive and backup every night. The performance is great. Unfortunately, this baord only has PCIx1 and regular PCI slots, so it cannot support hardware RAID add-in card easily.

Apart from the CDROM, all components worked well.

I have some anecdotal news that this board, with the new BIOS supports 4GB DIMMs, which means it should now support 16GB of RAM when the price of 4GB DIMMs comes down, I am using 4x2GB DIMMs at present.

I hope this helps somebody.

P.S. I have attached a screenshot, it shows 481MHz in use, this is with 4 Windows 2008 Servers (Exchange 2007, ADS, SQL 2008, Terminal Services) and one Linux CentOS server (Firewall, LAMP).

The Q8400 works a treat and I used a Radeon 4350 fanless. It was small, cheap (about NZ$60) and very quiet. If this board had onboard VGA, it would be complete!