Do all LGA 1155 Motherboards work with all LGA 1155 CPUs?

Hardware is an area that I have very little competence in. I've recently been tasked with the creation of a new server for the company I work for.

I've priced out a motherboard and CPU for the server, but am not 100% sure if they will work together. Before making the purchase, I felt it would be best to ask here first and make sure. To keep the question useful, I've expanded it's scope a bit.

Specifically I'm trying to Intel Xeon E3-1230 into a ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 LGA 1155. The CPU uses socket 1155 and the Motherboard has socket 1155. The confusion arises in that the motherboard's description page lists the i3, i5, and i7 as supported CPUs and not the Xeon.

So, will all motherboards with LGA 1155 sockets work with all CPUs that use 1155 sockets?

Do all LGA 1155 Motherboards work with all LGA 1155 CPUs

How could we ever know for certain, imagine how long it would take to test every combination, and who's going to do that anyway?

If you mean "generally do all LGA 1155 Motherboards work with any LGA 1155 CPU" then the answer is yes, that's the point of having compatible pin-outs.

But you do have to ensure that the BIOS/EUFI supports the specific chip you're going for, best to just update to the latest version - and you have to ensure you keep within the TDP limit of your system - if in doubt just stick to the TDP of a CPU you KNOW will work.

Now onto your specific combination, ASUS very kindly have a nice little 'CPU compatibility' link on their product page for that motherboard that SHOWS that the E3-1230 IS compatible with that product. May as well stick to that list yes?

Now onto another issue - please don't take this the wrong way, it's not meant badly - if you don't know the answer to this question then maybe you should be buying a ready-built server rather than building your own. It'll be a lot less hassle today and I'd imagine a hell of a lot less further down the road, just think - if you have any issues you can pick up the phone and get someone else to sort the problem.

The Mobo manufacturer should list the compatible CPUs. Check their HCL.

Also, building your own pizza-box is almost universally more expensive than buying something from HP, Dell, IBM, SuperMicro, etc. The CapEx is usually a much smaller component of the TCO than OpEx, and your pizza-box is going to have twice the OpEx over its life.

Whether you can successfully use a Xeon processor in a desktop motherboard depends on BIOS support for it.

The CPU support list for this board lists the Xeon E3-1230 as compatible, with BIOS version P2.10 or later.

You may need to use a different processor to update the BIOS before installing the Xeon.