ASRock Rack is one of the first manufacturers we have seen to release a new Skylake-H based platform. The ASRock Rack C236WSI4 is a compact platform that takes advantage of the Intel Xeon E3-1500 V5 family providing a very interesting building block. The Intel Xeon E3-1500 V5 series was just launched to support VDI and video transcoding applications.
ASRock Rack C236WSI4 Key Specs
- Mini-ITX form factor (6.7″ x 6.7″)
- Intel Xeon E3-1500 V5 Processor 4 core/ 8 thread
- 4x DDR4 SODIMM supporting up to 64GB (4x 16GB) ECC RAM
- 6x SATA III 6.0gbps ports with one supporting SATA DOM power
- 4x 1GbE with 3x Intel i210 and 1x Intel i219
- PCIe 3.0 x16 slot
- m.2 storage slot
- USB 3.0 Type-A header
We expect these to be popular with teams looking to take advantage of new desktop virtualization technologies such as GVT-g and video transcoding markets. We can see promise in this platform as the Xeon E3-1500 V5 series processors provide much higher-end graphics capabilities than the Intel Xeon E3-1200 V5 series. On the virtualization side, these platforms are going to put pricing pressure on NVIDIA’s stronghold of VDI acceleration.
We are meeting with ASRock Rack later today Taipei time and will report back any additional details we learn.
After the last round of ASRock Xeon-D boards (vaporware specials), the biggest question I have is if they are actually shipping boards available from re-sellers.
Is it just me or are the fins on the heatsink “pointing” in the wrong direction? The fan would be blowing hot air onto a memory slot and what look like inductors.. instead of to the back of the case. Weird IMO.
I guess the alternative would be to heat up the C236 and the MACs.. both of which would be pretty hot anyway.
Strange design.
I am in the EU and have the exact same question. Their Xeon-D boards are nowhere to be found around here.. Maybe they have such ridiculous pricing that they don’t compare favorably even to the already expensive Supermicro boards of the same ilk (which one can find around here)
It’s blowing over the DIMM’s and VRM’s like it should. I would like to see airflow over the chipset as well but would be more concerned about having a small down-draft fan that just killed an 1RU case options.