The Iwill DK8ES began its life as a hybrid server/workstation board, but Iwill has since changed its mind and will target the DK8ES exclusively at the server market. Workstation users aren't being left completely in the dark, though. Iwill expects to release a workstation-oriented DK8EW by the end of may.

Despite the DK8ES's change in focus, the revision 1.0 board we have for testing retains remnants of the original hybrid design. For example, the board still sports Firewire and audio codec chips, but lacks corresponding ports for either. Without ports, or even onboard headers, the audio and Firewire chips are essentially useless. They'll be removed from a revision 1.1 of the board, although stock currently in the channel is version 1.0—not that the 1.0 revision is widely available. At press time, the DK8ES had no in-stock listings on PriceGrabber, PriceWatch, or Froogle. That makes it hard to nail down the board's pricing, although Iwill suggests that it will cost slightly more than the competition.

Much of the DK8ES's higher cost can be attributed to the board's lack of electrolytic capacitors. Iwill ditched the capacitors in favor of digital VRMs, which cost more, but will be immune to potentially disastrous leaking or bursting. According to Iwill, foregoing electrolytic capacitors will improve the DK8ES's long-term reliability, something that's certainly a concern for servers and workstations.

The dearth of capacitors makes the DK8ES's layout look a little naked, but components still dot surface of the Extended ATX board. Note that the DK8ES includes two 24-pin primary power connectors. Iwill cautions against using both, but users can pick one or the other depending on whether the board is being deployed in a rackmount or tower enclosure.

With plenty of Extended ATX real estate to play with, the DK8ES's CPU sockets are well spaced. The board's taller VRM heat sinks and the close proximity of DIMM slots might interfere with extremely large coolers, though.

Speaking of DIMM slots, the DK8ES can hang up to four memory modules off each CPU socket for a total of 16GB of memory. Memory should, of course, be added in pairs to take advantage of the Opteron's dual-channel memory controller. You'll also want at least four DIMMs to take advantage of the extra bandwidth offered by the Opteron's Non-Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA).

The DK8ES uses an ultra-wide passive chipset cooler that provides plenty of clearance for longer graphics cards. Interestingly, earlier board revisions used a much smaller cooler. Perhaps Iwill found that the nForce Pro 2200 was getting a little too warm for comfort, necessitating a larger heat sink.

Although Iwill doesn't ship the DK8ES with a bridge connector or even the promise of SLI support, the board still sports a pair of PCI Express x16 slots. One of the slots only has access to two PCI-E lanes, but it should work just fine with a second graphics card for powering additional displays. Users also have a third graphics option, an on-board ATI Rage XL that's key to the board's newfound server focus.

Like the Thunder K8WE, the DK8ES uses AMD's 8131 PCI-X tunnel to drive a trio of PCI-X ports. The Iwill board's ports all run at 100MHz, and none are compatible with standard PCI cards. Without an onboard audio solution and no support for PCI audio cards, you'll have to use a USB audio device to squeeze a sound out of the DK8ES. Of course, server boards don't need audio output. They don't really need dual PCI-E x16 slots, either.

The nForce Pro 2200 handles all of the DK8ES's storage options, which include four Serial ATA II ports and a pair of ATA/133 channels. Unlike the competitors from Asus and Tyan, the DK8ES doesn't include any auxiliary storage controllers.

Given its server focus, it's no surprise that the DK8ES's port cluster is so sparse. Note the pair of Gigabit Ethernet ports, which are both powered by PCI Express chips from Broadcom, and the VGA output for the onboard video.