Straight from the article "...where we can use up to 8 cores with consumer processors or 18 cores with Xeons – double the threads with hyperthreading as well" The CPU in question the E5-2699 V3 http://ark.intel.com/products/81061/Intel-Xeon-Pro...
You've got 8 usb ports on the back. Why would you want to make any Type-C connections? Hardly any peripherals use type-c, and those that do will probably benefit most from being plugged into the front I/O panel. Because you can, doesn't mean you should. Asrock has made the right choice here in order to maintain maximim compatibility.
I am more wondering why they bothered with USB 2.0 and I would of liked at least one USB 3.1 internal so I could hook it up to the front of my chassis and onto a USB type C.
The selling point for me is the x4 M.2, the fact you lose that if you plug in a M-PCI card sux.
?? The M.2 slot is on the top side, between the CPU and the SATA/SATA Express ports. Look right of the USB3.1 headers, below the network port. See the thing that sees Ultra M.2?
I'm always intrigued by those pushing the limits, and this is it. Could this not run the small size dual GPU Fiji solution Lisa Su showed recently. Or would the the dual channel memory stand in the way?
The memory slots are on the other side of the board, so I can't see how that would make any difference. As for memory performance, there is no reason to think that would be an issue with a dual-GPU Fiji card. Most current motherboards are dual-channel.
With a 36 thread CPU ceiling, it would have been nice to see more than 32GB of RAM supported. But I suppose if you want a VFX beast you're probably not buying Mini ITX.
I remember on one of the asrock boards, the z97e itx ac, had its M.2 on the back of the motherboard. With a x99 platform, if you save 16 for the cpu you have at least 12 lanes to work with, so reasonably you could add 3 M.2 slots on the back, or 6 M.2 slots each with pcie3.0-4x. I understand there is probably a Z height restriction on the back of the board, and probably costs, since you have to plan 2 sides of the board, routing, flexing, etc. However I believe if a M.2 slot can fit, i'm sure most of the transistors and chips such as the sound, LAN, a lot of resistors, wifi, maybe another 2 slots of memory on the back, or all 4, flat of course, and maybe even the PCH with a revised heatsink of course can fit. If more items were on the back of the board, you could fit the CPU socket closer to the pcie slot and allow for all 4 channels of memory. It would be a monster of a rig. 4 channels of ddr4 + 3-6 M.2 pcie3.0x4 in raid0 + pcie3.0x16
Though it might be $400+, I'm sure there would be some interest a fractional proportion to the all out x99 extreme11 series. It would certainly interest me.
I love this board. I've had it for a little over a month now running my Plex server/NAS. I had an i5-4440 on an mITX Gigabyte board but it could only handle ~3 1080p transcodes before it started to struggle. Once ASRock released this board I grabbed it and tossed a i7-5820K in and now it has no issues transcoding 6+ streams. I haven't even gotten around to overclocking the 5820K yet.
Absolutely amazing how they managed to cram that socket and the powerful VRM solution on this board and still have enough space to fit things like the M.2 slot. ASRock has some impressive engineers on staff. For my use case I needed as many cores as possible in the smallest space as I had already invested in my Node 304 and really didn't want to move to another case. I did need to buy an SFX power supply as I was concerned about my ATX power supply blocking the right-angle SATA ports but that specific issue is due to the layout of the Node 304.
I can't wait to get mine. Just ordered it after reading this review, which provided proof of what I suspected all along...quad-channel doesn't provide much in the way of general performance, just like triple-channel didn't provide much performance on X58.
Of all the things dual-channel will bottle-neck, the only program I use that would be affected is WinRAR and that's negligible.
ASRock gets a LOT of street cred for making such a bold product. This is the kind of thing DFI or ABIT would have made if they were still around. An ultra-enthusiast, niche, and risky product. It's possible they won't even break even on this considering the amount of engineering that went into it. Margins are already razor thin on motherboards so they need to sell tens of thousands of these to make any money, even at $250 a pop.
Is that something he's been battling for a bit now? We had this flu going around in Canada this past winter that easily throws you for a loop for 3 weeks.. just as you start to think your getting better it knocks you on your ass even worse. Nasty little virus.
heh.. he's going to be a busy little beaver.. He mentioned something about the 960 review coming up this week as well.
"For readers expecting the AMD Fury X review, unfortunately Ryan has been battling a virus this week and despite his best efforts it has taken its toll"
lol, this was the same reason given for the missing nvidia 960 review, and then it was next week, then next etc and its like half a year late already ...
while it might be *cool* to have 18 cores in mITX form, $4500 for such a cpu makes it prohibitively expensive for almost all mITX use-cases, heck even 14 cores at $2750 or 10 at $2000 i mostly just wasting money. these are designed & sold for 2S or 4S configurations! its the E5-16xx v3 cpus that make most sense... so were talking up to 8 cores...
I don't get it, one of the reasons I would get this platform is for quad channel memory, seems like they could have made this work by using sodimms and doing some inventive layout by allowing half the ram to be attached to the back of the board.
If they used SoDIMMs an equal number of commenters would be flaming it for being limited to crappy lower performing ram. At present availability might be a problem too. Newegg and Amazon don't appear to have any DDR4 SoDIMMs available; and the only capacity Micron lists as being in production is an 8GB version.
I think there is another server oriented mini ITX X99 board that does that, using DDR4 ECC SO-DIMMs I think. Unfortunately they are more expensive at this point.
Ian, even if we are the only two customers asrock has for this board...I'm ok with that because I'm glad somebody actually took the time to properly engineer and manufacture the high end Intel platform in ITX. Just amazing what has been accomplished here.
It kind of defeats the purpose to use a powerful CPU in a MINI-ITX system. X99 should be Quad Lane DDR4 Memory access. The more powerful the Processor the more it can benefit from lots of the fastest RAM. A MATX setup might make more sense. You are also forced to use a video card due to no onboard IGP for that socket.
If you didn't want to use the PCIe lane for a video card, there is a BCM. You can boot and run the entire system without a videocard. The BCM can even do 1920x1080!
You could easily add an 8" 8-port Areca SAS RAID card to that 16x slot, although I don't know why you'd want ITX (or this platform at all...) if your plan was to make a file server.
Did you read the article? Its entire purpose was to quantify the cost of switching to dual-lane DDR4, and it quantified it as 'not very much under most circumstances'.
They should have waited just a little longer, and included HD6200 graphics. A small server like this with QuickSync and no need for a video card would be something.
You don't need a video card or onboard video. It has a management chip (BCM) that can output video via CAT5e. You can use a media converter or just use remote management.
I am interested in these smaller boards.. sure the Quad channel memory would be nice but whatever.. no biggie.. No crossfire/SLI isn't a issue for me either since I only ever use one Video Card (usually mid-high end)
The only complaint.. I've yet to find a mini-itx case I want to build a system around. So I keep going the Matx route instead.
Are there any plans to test the ASRock Rack EPC612D4I?
It'd be interesting to see what the real-life performance difference between this board and the EPC612D4I, given the latter has four SODIMM slots, enabling quad channel memory.
That is one of the worst designs I have ever seen. I dont get it. The same is happening with the Z170E-ITX it seems. They had a perfect CPU socket placement on the old ones and were highly praised by everyone for it, since it fit so well in small cases, and now they move it down all of the sudden. WHY ASROCK WHY?
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mighty78 - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
The title is wrong. Motherboard is 17cm x 17cm so it's surface area is 289 cm^2.Ian Cutress - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
Yup, you're right. A mental hiccup - adjusted. :)Ancalagon44 - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
Um where does the 36 threads come in? The CPU can only do 16?PaulMack - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
It supports the 18-core Xeon X5-2699.mighty78 - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
The board supports 18-core Xeon E5-2699 v3, though it was not used in this review.icrf - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
I guess you could drop an 18-core Xeon E5-2699 v3 in there.cchalo - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
Straight from the article "...where we can use up to 8 cores with consumer processors or 18 cores with Xeons – double the threads with hyperthreading as well"The CPU in question the E5-2699 V3 http://ark.intel.com/products/81061/Intel-Xeon-Pro...
shadarlo - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
No USB-C on a board this high-end? Shame.Wardrop - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
You've got 8 usb ports on the back. Why would you want to make any Type-C connections? Hardly any peripherals use type-c, and those that do will probably benefit most from being plugged into the front I/O panel. Because you can, doesn't mean you should. Asrock has made the right choice here in order to maintain maximim compatibility.cenpjas - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
I am more wondering why they bothered with USB 2.0 and I would of liked at least one USB 3.1 internal so I could hook it up to the front of my chassis and onto a USB type C.The selling point for me is the x4 M.2, the fact you lose that if you plug in a M-PCI card sux.
gw74 - Sunday, July 19, 2015 - link
what about in the future when USB-C becomes the standard?dj_aris - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
Any shot of the backside picturing the M.2 slot?vnangia - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
?? The M.2 slot is on the top side, between the CPU and the SATA/SATA Express ports. Look right of the USB3.1 headers, below the network port. See the thing that sees Ultra M.2?dj_aris - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
Yup! Didn't notice, expecting to find it in the back line Z97-ITX...Gadgety - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
I'm always intrigued by those pushing the limits, and this is it. Could this not run the small size dual GPU Fiji solution Lisa Su showed recently. Or would the the dual channel memory stand in the way?Flunk - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
The memory slots are on the other side of the board, so I can't see how that would make any difference. As for memory performance, there is no reason to think that would be an issue with a dual-GPU Fiji card. Most current motherboards are dual-channel.farhadd - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
With a 36 thread CPU ceiling, it would have been nice to see more than 32GB of RAM supported. But I suppose if you want a VFX beast you're probably not buying Mini ITX.vnangia - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
Don't you need to use ECC with the Xeons? ECC DDR4 seems to be available in 32GB modules (see, for example, Samsung's here - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8... ), so you could go to 64GB.tarak73 - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
This board doesn't support ECCyuhong - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
From http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99E-ITXac/?cat=Spe... :"Supports DDR4 ECC, un-buffered memory/RDIMM with Intel® Xeon® processors E5 series in the LGA 2011-3 Socket"
leexgx - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
needs to be DDR4 ECC RDIMM (registered but not buffered) not buffered or Chipkill (the link you posted seems buffered or a chipkill like ram)bebimbap - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
I remember on one of the asrock boards, the z97e itx ac, had its M.2 on the back of the motherboard.With a x99 platform, if you save 16 for the cpu you have at least 12 lanes to work with, so reasonably you could add 3 M.2 slots on the back, or 6 M.2 slots each with pcie3.0-4x.
I understand there is probably a Z height restriction on the back of the board, and probably costs, since you have to plan 2 sides of the board, routing, flexing, etc. However I believe if a M.2 slot can fit, i'm sure most of the transistors and chips such as the sound, LAN, a lot of resistors, wifi, maybe another 2 slots of memory on the back, or all 4, flat of course, and maybe even the PCH with a revised heatsink of course can fit. If more items were on the back of the board, you could fit the CPU socket closer to the pcie slot and allow for all 4 channels of memory. It would be a monster of a rig. 4 channels of ddr4 + 3-6 M.2 pcie3.0x4 in raid0 + pcie3.0x16
Though it might be $400+, I'm sure there would be some interest a fractional proportion to the all out x99 extreme11 series. It would certainly interest me.
WithoutWeakness - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
I love this board. I've had it for a little over a month now running my Plex server/NAS. I had an i5-4440 on an mITX Gigabyte board but it could only handle ~3 1080p transcodes before it started to struggle. Once ASRock released this board I grabbed it and tossed a i7-5820K in and now it has no issues transcoding 6+ streams. I haven't even gotten around to overclocking the 5820K yet.Absolutely amazing how they managed to cram that socket and the powerful VRM solution on this board and still have enough space to fit things like the M.2 slot. ASRock has some impressive engineers on staff. For my use case I needed as many cores as possible in the smallest space as I had already invested in my Node 304 and really didn't want to move to another case. I did need to buy an SFX power supply as I was concerned about my ATX power supply blocking the right-angle SATA ports but that specific issue is due to the layout of the Node 304.
DCide - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
If it's like their mATX board, just start with the slowest (4GHz) OC pre-set in the BIOS. It runs very stably for me.You can fine tune it later if you want to, but in the meantime you can get significant performance benefits right away.
Samus - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
I can't wait to get mine. Just ordered it after reading this review, which provided proof of what I suspected all along...quad-channel doesn't provide much in the way of general performance, just like triple-channel didn't provide much performance on X58.Of all the things dual-channel will bottle-neck, the only program I use that would be affected is WinRAR and that's negligible.
ASRock gets a LOT of street cred for making such a bold product. This is the kind of thing DFI or ABIT would have made if they were still around. An ultra-enthusiast, niche, and risky product. It's possible they won't even break even on this considering the amount of engineering that went into it. Margins are already razor thin on motherboards so they need to sell tens of thousands of these to make any money, even at $250 a pop.
BubbaJoe TBoneMalone - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
I'm surprised the other manufacturers are not giving ASRock any competition with their own X99 Mini-ITX motherboard.T1beriu - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
Where's your Fury X review?! :(Where's your Radeon 300 series review?
Have you lost your contacts with AMD PR or lack of time?
Ian Cutress - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
Check the first sentence of the review.just4U - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
Is that something he's been battling for a bit now? We had this flu going around in Canada this past winter that easily throws you for a loop for 3 weeks.. just as you start to think your getting better it knocks you on your ass even worse. Nasty little virus.heh.. he's going to be a busy little beaver.. He mentioned something about the 960 review coming up this week as well.
Samus - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
When I get sick, I get sick for weeks, too. Fortunately it's only once a year for me.mobutu - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
"For readers expecting the AMD Fury X review, unfortunately Ryan has been battling a virus this week and despite his best efforts it has taken its toll"lol, this was the same reason given for the missing nvidia 960 review, and then it was next week, then next etc and its like half a year late already ...
1mpetuous - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
If you're too desperate to wait for analysis the raw data is already in Bench.der - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
20th comment.MOAR THREADS MOAR POWER!
bernstein - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
while it might be *cool* to have 18 cores in mITX form, $4500 for such a cpu makes it prohibitively expensive for almost all mITX use-cases, heck even 14 cores at $2750 or 10 at $2000 i mostly just wasting money. these are designed & sold for 2S or 4S configurations!its the E5-16xx v3 cpus that make most sense... so were talking up to 8 cores...
bernstein - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
or a i7-5xx0... but then you loose ECC...MrSpadge - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
I think the 5820K would be best suited for this mainboard, as it relaxes cooling and is going to "suffer" the least from dual channel memory.cyrusfox - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
I don't get it, one of the reasons I would get this platform is for quad channel memory, seems like they could have made this work by using sodimms and doing some inventive layout by allowing half the ram to be attached to the back of the board.DanNeely - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
If they used SoDIMMs an equal number of commenters would be flaming it for being limited to crappy lower performing ram. At present availability might be a problem too. Newegg and Amazon don't appear to have any DDR4 SoDIMMs available; and the only capacity Micron lists as being in production is an 8GB version.yuhong - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
I think there is another server oriented mini ITX X99 board that does that, using DDR4 ECC SO-DIMMs I think. Unfortunately they are more expensive at this point.creed3020 - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
Look no further than the ASRock RACK EPC612D4I for a mITX board with LGA2011-3 and quad channel memory support.http://www.servethehome.com/asrock-rack-epc612d4i-...
mobutu - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
In the Linus video that you linked in the article, they test is with 2*16 = 32GB RAM:https://youtu.be/MjDJNwAANwA?t=7m5s
Samus - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
Ian, even if we are the only two customers asrock has for this board...I'm ok with that because I'm glad somebody actually took the time to properly engineer and manufacture the high end Intel platform in ITX. Just amazing what has been accomplished here.piasabird - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
It kind of defeats the purpose to use a powerful CPU in a MINI-ITX system. X99 should be Quad Lane DDR4 Memory access. The more powerful the Processor the more it can benefit from lots of the fastest RAM. A MATX setup might make more sense. You are also forced to use a video card due to no onboard IGP for that socket.Samus - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
If you didn't want to use the PCIe lane for a video card, there is a BCM. You can boot and run the entire system without a videocard. The BCM can even do 1920x1080!You could easily add an 8" 8-port Areca SAS RAID card to that 16x slot, although I don't know why you'd want ITX (or this platform at all...) if your plan was to make a file server.
TomWomack - Friday, June 26, 2015 - link
Did you read the article? Its entire purpose was to quantify the cost of switching to dual-lane DDR4, and it quantified it as 'not very much under most circumstances'.glugglug - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
They should have waited just a little longer, and included HD6200 graphics. A small server like this with QuickSync and no need for a video card would be something.Samus - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
You don't need a video card or onboard video. It has a management chip (BCM) that can output video via CAT5e. You can use a media converter or just use remote management.Gigaplex - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
Who would include the HD6200? That's part of the CPU, not the motherboard.fallaha56 - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
stick a Fury Nano in this and let's see some action ;-)just4U - Wednesday, June 24, 2015 - link
I am interested in these smaller boards.. sure the Quad channel memory would be nice but whatever.. no biggie.. No crossfire/SLI isn't a issue for me either since I only ever use one Video Card (usually mid-high end)The only complaint.. I've yet to find a mini-itx case I want to build a system around. So I keep going the Matx route instead.
Samus - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
I've had poor experience with every SLI setup I've built. The performance per dollar just isn't there for gaming.Pork@III - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
X99 on ITX is capitalism perverse!BlueTortoise - Thursday, June 25, 2015 - link
Are there any plans to test the ASRock Rack EPC612D4I?It'd be interesting to see what the real-life performance difference between this board and the EPC612D4I, given the latter has four SODIMM slots, enabling quad channel memory.
creed3020 - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
For review of that board head over here: http://www.servethehome.com/asrock-rack-epc612d4i-...Beaver M. - Monday, June 29, 2015 - link
That is one of the worst designs I have ever seen. I dont get it. The same is happening with the Z170E-ITX it seems. They had a perfect CPU socket placement on the old ones and were highly praised by everyone for it, since it fit so well in small cases, and now they move it down all of the sudden.WHY ASROCK WHY?
MySchizoBuddy - Tuesday, June 30, 2015 - link
Why didn't you do any cpu opencl bechmarks. this would be very good for a compute unit