Testing vSphere ESXi Free Hypervisor, clon baremetal server?

Hi,

I'm testing VMWare vSphere ESXi Hypervisor, the free one.

I'm trying to get advise which motherboard should I buy for testing the vSphere Hypervisor?

I tested in a few motherboard form Intel and Asus and the Boot CD saysit can not detect the network card. But in a Dell 2950 PowerEdge it works fine.

Another thing is that I read that in a motheboard with only SATA2 ports, the Datastore is detected as "remote" and not "local", so my final question is if vSphere is recomended only from branded/certified servers or if it could work in a baremetal/clon/DYI server?

Many thanks

Oliver