ASRock Rack 1U10E-ICX2 Topology
Inside the system, we have the ASRock Rack SP2C621D32LM3 motherboard. We could not find a system diagram, so instead, we have the motherboard diagram.
As one can see, the I/O is split between the two processors, although Socket 0 has the PCH as we would expect. Something that is notable is that the PCIe slots we showed using the x16 risers are actually x24 slots. That is for the 2U version of this server and the larger PCIe slot is used for risers that have x16 and x8 slots, for example.
Overall, this is a reasonably straightforward system diagram, but we wanted to document it in this review.
Next, let us discuss management.
ASRock Rack 1U10E-ICX2 Management
In terms of management, we get the standard ASRock Rack IPMI management interface via the ASPEED AST2500 controller. Will went over the management of the motherboard in his review.
As he noted, we have gone over the exact feature set of the ASRock Rack AST2500 BMC implementation in previous reviews like the X570D4U-2L2T and ROMED6U-2L2T. Everything written in those reviews applies here; we get full HTML5 iKVM, including remote media, along with BIOS and BMC firmware updates.
Will noted that one challenge with this platform is the slow remote media, and we saw that again with the motherboards built into this server.
Overall, the management works as we would expect, except that remote media can load slowly via the HTML5 iKVM viewer.
Next, let us get to the performance.
ASRock Rack 1U10E-ICX2 Performance
In terms of performance, we are fairly late in the Ice Lake Xeon cycle. We just wanted to see how this system fared with midrange and higher-end CPUs. Sometimes we find that systems cannot handle sustained loads and throttle CPUs leading to lower performance.
Here, both the Intel Xeon Gold 6330 and Xeon Platinum 8368 performed just about as expected and within what we would use as a standard margin of error.
Next, let us get to power consumption before our final words.
Regarding the extra PCIe x16 slot:
Maybe one of these fits:
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=RB1U2M2_G4
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=RB1U4M2_G4
If you aren’t going to throw out your servers/workstations every 8 to 12 months to buy new ones. Stay Far away from Asrock. Their support is awful. Almost like they are advised against providing any form of service for products older than a year. Huge part of buying these products at their high prices is to be able to used them as long as possible. We have had so many Asrock servers and now server boards die for the past 2 years. Especially their EPYC line. God awful company.