MACHINIST Dual CPU Motherboard X99-D8-MAX Intel LGA 2011-3, E-ATX Server | Support Intel XEON E5 V3/V4, Core i7 5th/6th Gen Processors, PCIe 3.0, DDR4 Max 256GB, TPM 2.0, Dual LAN, M.2, SATA 6Gb/s

I was not expecting much as the dual CPU was inexpensive. I was impressed with the packing and the board looked really nice. You’ll need to have a E-ATX case. Be careful as some cases listed as E-ATX don’t have enough standoffs for this MB. Board posted and booted fine and saw both of my E5-2673V4. I’ve read some reviews that say these fail regularly. I’ll update this review if this board has any issues. Easy to install if you have built PC’s before. Plenty of options for additional ports and fans. So far I’m very pleased with this MB.

DOA. Sadly i was way past the purchase date. Its a server baord so the foramt doesnt exactly fit E-ATX either. The manual is poorly written. The diagram does not match the board itself. The manual is missing many features of the Motherboard. Support is basically non existent. I suspect these are repurposed boards, which would expalin all the paint.

Personally, I was not sure what to expect using this very obviously Chinese motherboard, but ultimately I am happy to report it works very well for what it is. There are no instructions, so if you are new to building, you may want to avoid this entirely and go for a name brand. Initially I had a problem with booting, but upon looking up the debug codes, I was able to determine which of my processors I had gotten off eBay were bad. I used Xeon 2667V4's in my build for the clock speed, with attached Noctua NH-D9DX i4 coolers (these are great and keep the processors nice and cool, even if used passive). There are no mini PCIe slots, so if you are using more than one GPU, you will only have access to ONE of the two remaining slots for other add on cards. For me, this was not an issue, as I only required WiFi/BT. The culprits are two Geforce GTX Titan X's causing this to happen, but it makes for an excellent SLI system. This is also an issue for the top of the two m.2 slots... One is blocked/covered by the video cards, so it's not going to get used due to not being able to place a heat sink there. Just as well, the stand offs for said m.2 slots are specific to this board, so good luck finding a replacement if you damage or lose it (I did, so I took a star for this) As others have stated, there are few cases on the market that will support this case, so I put it on a cheap test bench bought here on Amazon, and it works fine since I don't need to move it around. The TPM slot does function with an MSI-based module, but the BIOS will not see it. Which is unfortunate, but not needed in my scenario regardless as it won't support Windows 11 anyway due to the age of the processors used in this board. The board itself is pretty sturdy, has VRM Heatsinks, a chipset heatsink, lots of three pin fan headers. Only one USB header though. Running 64GB of ECC Samsung server memory, works fine, was cheap and new modules can be had on eBay. I may see what the Linux support for it is like at some point, but not yet. Maybe once Windows 10 is expired.

I've been running the MACHINIST X99 dual-socket motherboard for about two years now in a high-performance, Linux-based workstation setup with Dual RTX3090's, and it has been rock solid throughout. This board punches far above its price point—but with caveats. This board is not for the average consumer, but if you're a power user who doesn’t mind a little extra legwork and wants affordable dual-CPU compute power, the MACHINIST X99 delivers. It's held up flawlessly for two years in my setup. If you're building a budget AI dev box —this board was worth every penny.