Here is a very interesting one from SC19, the ASRock Rack X570D4I-2T. During my booth visit to ASRock Rack’s booth at SC19, there was a placard without a motherboard. For some context, I was told that this board was coming a few weeks ago during a trip to Taipei, but it was not a product I saw during my visit to ASRock Rack’s offices. Fast forward to SC19, and there is a mITX motherboard with dual 10GbE and 3rd Gen Ryzen support spec sheet, but no motherboard. I was told at the booth that they could not find the motherboard at the show. Perhaps a Ryzen enthusiast swiped it, but we can at least learn a lot from the specs.
ASRock Rack X570D4I-2T Specs
Here are the key specs for the ASRock Rack X570D4I-2T:
- mITX Form Factor
- AMD Ryzen 2nd and 3rd Gen support up to 105W
- 4x SODIMM slots, DDR4-2933/2666/2400
- Max 64GB ECC or non-ECC SODIMM
- Chipset AMD X570
- 8x SATA III via OCuLink connection
- Expansion Slots: 1x PCIe Gen4 x16
- 2x 10Gbase-T via Intel X550-AT
- Out of band IPMI Port and AST2500 BMC
- 1x USB 3.1 Gen 1, 2x USB 3.1 Gen 2
- M.2 PCIe Gen4 2280 (80mm) NVMe or SATA III slot
This is a very complete platform. If you have been salivating at potentially using one of the new 3rd gen AMD Ryzen chips with ECC memory support to make a high core count server, this may be the best option. The board also supports PCIe Gen4 which the previous version, the ASRock Rack X470D4U did not. Adding the dual 10Gbase-T Intel X550 NIC is a major step up from some of the Aquantia based NICs on consumer motherboards if you are building a server with Ryzen.
A key challenge with using Ryzen in servers, as we mentioned in our recent Intel Xeon E-2288G Review, is that the Ryzen platform is supported by AMD’s desktop team, not the server team. That means AMD’s support resources for the Ryzen platforms are targeted more at desktop applications. Still, this platform with a BMC for IPMI, dual 10Gbase-T, and a small form factor can make for a very interesting server product.
Another Look
Here is another view of the placard since the system was not in the SC19 booth, nor my pictures from Taipei:
Hopefully, this platform goes into production soon so those die-hard AMD Ryzen enthusiasts who want to use the new chips in compact servers can do so.
Too bad there is only one M.2 slot (think mirrored boot device) but perhaps there simply wasn’t enough room left.
Or SATA-DOM ports would be good too.
oh gosh, X470D4U2-2T costs in my country $435 ( EU ), wondering if price for X470D4U2-2T drops, or X570D4U2-2T will costs more… Anyway, 3700X or 4000 would be a great for homelab… Of course Ryzen demands high speed ram and unreg ubuff ecc rams are 2666 only…
Some 8c/16t APU with mainstream motherboard and fast rams would be much more usefull than this for a half price… , but wait, there is no 8c/16t APU :D
If this is reasonably priced it will be awesome for all the homelabs out there.
We use a X470D4U ryzen server as a build server. The high clock works very well for our mostly c/c++ code, especially for the cost(3700x).
Funny thing is the high core counts and extra I/O PCIe 4 probably help *more* in low-end servers than in most of the PCs where these chips are now. The simpler consumer platform (vs. 128 lanes, 8 mem channels, etc.) should make cheaper boards possible too, more or less like with Intel/Xeon E.
It’d be cool to see other form factors like there are for Xeon E. Lowish TDP and not very expandable seems like a good fit for tiny sub-1U boxes, say.
Interesting product. Would like to see a larger form factor with dual M.2 22110 and/or U.2, full length DIMMs, and SFP+ option.
Ryzen repackaged for low end servers could be a good Xeon E competitor.
If you want M.2 you should really go for something with more lanes.
Then you can just use a PCI-E riser card.
24 PCI-E lanes equals 48 PCI-E lanes. That’s plenty for dual m2 or u2
I really wish that ASRock would support 128GB ECC RAM in their “server” configurations.
I’d love to get an x570 board in a 1U or 2U case with:
— 2ea NVMe drives in RAID1 for the OS
— 2-3ea 4TB SATA drives for the storage
— 2ea GBE NIC (10GBE support would be optional)
— 3950X
I would use two of these to consolidate my virtualization farm in my home office.
I might have to look at an older Threadripper…
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X399D8A-2T#Specifications
ASB:
PCIe Gen4 x16 + some PCIe NVMe adapter = + 1-2 NVMes, unfortunatelly not HBA PCIe..
I guess that some RAMs will eventualy pass memtest with 128G…
Btw: X570D4I-2T vs X470D4U2-2T ( mini vs micro ) and mini is always more expensive…
Oh dang!
Half of what I was waiting for, but dropped part of what I need. Need two nvme slots, two PICe ports. was waiting for 10Gig nice, so yay for that. Hope they come out with sibling board that is miniATX. miniITX is great for vendors, but not me.
Now listed on AsrockRack.com: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X570D4I-2T#Specifications
I think this board is very illthoughtout to be totally honest
For applications like a small NAS device then a normal AM4 board is more than enough and are available pretty cheaply with BETTER SPECS
Like the X399 board this would have been better as an ATX board or larger to allow for more expansion and to make it suitable for a MUCH wider range of applications, but crippling the board with just a single PCIe slot, then crippling it again with a shortage of PCIe M.2 storage as they did on the other boards makes it seem like they DONT want to even try and encroach on Supermicros dominance in the DIY server board market
The X399 with dual 10gb ports was “good” despite its M.2 capabilities being crippled out of the gate as it had the PCIe slots to allow expansion via other means
But this has none of the advantages of the X399 board, DOES have its own limitations and seems to have also carried forwards some of the limitations of the previous boards
So whilst I quite like the X399 2T variant and was hoping to add an X570 version for a server to run gaming VMs over the network this board REALLY doesnt cut the mustard at all
At the VERY least I would have wanted 2×16, 2×4, 1×8 PCie slots, 2 x4 NVME M.2 sockets, 2x 10gb ethernet + IMPI with dedicated NIC
Anything less than that and I might as well just use a normal motherboard and save a small fortune and live without IMPI
Even the X470 version has MUCH more real world applications than this Mitx variant
Utterly pointless motherboard with extremely limited use cases most of which would be better served by a MUCH cheaper standard motherboard anyway leaving me to wonder who would even bother to buy this pile of poorly thought out trash
ASROCK, DO BETTER!
Also, isnt it about time server/workstation boards had BOTH VGA and HDMI outputs for local video?