I’m in the process of converting my once gaming desktop to an ESX server(build found below). I just bought an Intel PRO/1000 MT Dual Port Server Adapter since even though RealTek 8111e’s are supported in ESX 5 they simply do not pass traffic. It is a shame since there are 2 on-board gigabit nics in the motherboard. I have seen where people were able to get them working however after about 2 days of trying I’ve come to the realization that I should just buy and $18 dollar dual nic and move on. I did try to insert the drivers into the 4.1 release and go figure nothing.
I copied a lot of my build from http://tinkertry.com/vzilla/.
ASRock Z68 PROFESSIONAL GEN3 LGA 1155 Intel Z68 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
Intel Core i7-2600 Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost)
Corsair Force Series GT CSSD-F120GBGT-BK 2.5″ 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 32GB (4 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory
If anyone has any ideas on storage please post below. I was thinking about an hp proliant microserver… who knows as of now…
packetroute 
I didn’t realize you had a ASRock motherboard. Those things are rock solid. I had 2 of them for my first Vcenter build back in 06′ with ESX 3.5 (good old dual core AMD). Those things were rock solid. Make sure you turn off the turbo boost thing, you don’t want your ESX server seeing the CPU has changed and PSOD.