I was expecting that there might be some problems since it’s not on the HCL, but it seems it runs perfectly! SATA worked just fine! Created VMFS partitions right on the SATA drives! The broadcom nic was supported using the tg3 driver. I was pleasantly surprised as the install to deployment was very easy.
This came as a great deal from Dell when they sent me the 30% off coupons for Dell SMB where the 2nd proc came free, I got a quad core 1.6ghz box for just 761 or so out the door. From newegg, I got 2 2gb dimms and then CompUSA a couple of SATA 500gb hds for roughly a total of 440 or so. The total was less than 1200 for an awesome machine!