Asrock announced another socket LGA2011-3 ITX motherboard, a serverboard called EPC612D4I

[snowComet]

After the X99E-ITX/ac, Asrock on Wednesday (29/4) announced another socket LGA2011-3 ITX board, called "EPC612D4I". This board is designed to be a powerful mini-ITX platform for micro servers and other small form factor rendering solutions, thus it has some differences with the X99E-ITX/ac.

 

Firstly, this board has 4 ram slot, support quad channel DDR4 ECC ram, instead of 2 ram slots,and dual channel DDR4 ram on the X99-E/ITX. But those 4 ram slots are SO-DIMM ram slots, not the DIMM ram slots on the X99E-ITX/ac. Since there are no DDR4 SO-DIMM ram available at this moment (pls feel free to correct me if I'm wrong), you may not be able to build with this board until those rams are available. 

 

 

Also this board has 3 GLAN ports, one from Intel i210 , one from Intel i217,  and one from a Realtek IPMI/ out-of-band management chip RTL8211E. It also supports 3 USB 3.0 (no USB 3.1 ports on this board), 2 on the backplane, and one on the board as an internal Type-A connector. 

 

In addition, this server board has fewer SATA ports than the X99E-ITX/ac (only 4 ports instead of 6), and lack of any M.2 connector onboard. But it has a PCI 3.0 16x slot like many other ITX boards.

Lastly, it use the same narrow ILM LGA2011-3 socket, which means most after-market LGA2011-3 coolers won't work on this board. But unlike the X99E-ITX/ac, which Asrock bundled a server-sized CPU cooler and an optional CPU water cooler mount plate (which is is compatible with Cooler Master's Seldom 120V Plus/120V closed loop CPU liquid coolers, according to techspot.com) with the X99E-ITX/ac, this board won't be bundled with any of those. But since there are some server-grade narrow ILM CPU coolers available on the market, it should not be difficult to buy one.

Tomsitpro.com reported that the EPC612D4I LGA2011-3 mini-ITX motherboard is available now for $265.

EPC612D4I's spec

http://www.servethehome.com/asrock-rack-epc612d4i-releases-intel-xeon-e5-v3-mitx-motherboard/

http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/mini-itx-server-motherboards-asrock-rack-lga2011-3,1-2561.html

Product page of Asrock Rack's website:

http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=EPC612D4I#Specifications

[Vitalius]

Literally just started looking for a mini-ITX server board that can do it all. 

This comes out.

[linuxfan66]

Who is the general buyer of this kind of product?

the last thing i remember about microservers in AMD pulling out of the market...

[Lolzious]

What an interesting little board. Not a mm of PCB wasted

[Vitalius]

Who is the general buyer of this kind of product?

the last thing i remember about microservers in AMD pulling out of the market...

I don't know to be honest. 

I know they are great for building very powerful mini-servers. I love Mini-ITX servers. There's basically no reason to have the big ones in my personal opinion, for most consumers who would want a server. Servers usually don't need several PCI-e cards too.

I honestly can't think of a demographic this specifically pertains too. I guess it's whichever one I'm in, because I love these things.

[Casperian]

Who is the general buyer of this kind of product?

the last thing i remember about microservers in AMD pulling out of the market...

Anyone who wants a small but powerful server really, I'd use it for general server stuff like repositories or raid storage and use the CPU for building projects. Seems pretty sweet to me especially the 3 gigabit ports.

[Vitalius]

Anyone who wants a small but powerful server really, I'd use it for general server stuff like repositories or raid storage and use the CPU for building projects. Seems pretty sweet to me especially the 3 gigabit ports.

I just want to point out that one guy who benchmarked the C750 Avaton had Plex transcoding 3 different 1080p videos at the same time with only 86% CPU usage and a temperature of ~56C in what was basically a Fractal Design Node 304 with the CPU passively cooled.

The things those little 8 core CPUs can do is pretty great honestly. 

Here is the link to his blog for part 1 of the review he did of the FreeNAS Mini (which came with a C2750D4I motherboard from ASRock).

Full Disclosure: He is a moderator on the FreeNAS forums. Take that how you will.

[Comrade_Dave]

Seems pretty sweet to me especially the 3 gigabit ports.

It only uses 2 of the 3. One is for IPMI, it is a network interface so you don't have to connect a monitor, mouse or keyboard.

_

 

The only downside I can see for this is if you have an HBA or RAID card you cannot expand to 10Gbe. I know that the vast majority of people will not need 10Gbe but I like to have the option for future expansion.

[Casperian]

It only uses 2 of the 3. One is for IPMI, it is a network interface so you don't have to connect a monitor, mouse or keyboard.

_

 

The only downside I can see for this is if you have an HBA or RAID card you cannot expand to 10Gbe. I know that the vast majority of people will not need 10Gbe but I like to have the option for future expansion.

I wouldn't see this as a motherboard for a storage server. The form factor alone suggests it would have access to a networked storage array because most ITX cases don't have many drive slots and, if you do use this in a bigger case, you might as well by a bigger motherboard anyway.

 

I'd fill the PCI-E slot with either a GPU or 10Gbe (I don't saturate 1Gbe so unlikely). This could be a great small form factor folding box too.

[Sintezza]

looks cool.

Atleast i can use quad channel ram.

[Comrade_Dave]

I wouldn't see this as a motherboard for a storage server. The form factor alone suggests it would have access to a networked storage array because most ITX cases don't have many drive slots and, if you do use this in a bigger case, you might as well by a bigger motherboard anyway.

 

I'd fill the PCI-E slot with either a GPU or 10Gbe (I don't saturate 1Gbe so unlikely). This could be a great small form factor folding box too.

I agree that that does make more sense.

 

I just found the iStarUSA S-917 recently and thought it would make a cool NAS box.

[snowComet]

I agree that that does make more sense.

 

I just found the iStarUSA S-917 recently and thought it would make a cool NAS box.

I want 2 of this case to build my NAS~~~

I have several 5.25" to multiple 3.5" drive cages, and since there are not much 5.25" drive bays in computer cases nowadays, I was wondering what I could do with those cages. Now I think I could build my NAS with those cages....

Thx for sharing this, @Comrade_Dave~~

[Comrade_Dave]

@snowComet You're welcome. I was looking for cases that have a lot of 5.25" bays for hotswap cages. I am thinking about upgrading to a larger NAS and looking into FreeNAS and other solutions. I also would like for it to have a fairly powerful CPU for it to be my plex server.

[Vitalius]

I wouldn't see this as a motherboard for a storage server. The form factor alone suggests it would have access to a networked storage array because most ITX cases don't have many drive slots and, if you do use this in a bigger case, you might as well by a bigger motherboard anyway.

 

I'd fill the PCI-E slot with either a GPU or 10Gbe (I don't saturate 1Gbe so unlikely). This could be a great small form factor folding box too.

 

Personally, I love M-ITX storage servers. Most people won't ever need more Storage than you could fit in a M-ITX form factor. Just my opinion.

@snowComet You're welcome. I was looking for cases that have a lot of 5.25" bays for hotswap cages. I am thinking about upgrading to a larger NAS and looking into FreeNAS and other solutions. I also would like for it to have a fairly powerful CPU for it to be my plex server.

Regarding Plex, CPUs, & FreeNAS, the FreeNAS team has a thing called the FreeNAS Mini which is basically their version of a M-ITX small Storage Server. You can build something equivalent for like $200 less, so I wouldn't buy one unless you don't like DIY. 

However, the motherboard they use (the ASRock C2750D4I) has an Intel Avoton 8 core CPU, which a moderator on the FreeNAS forums (cyberj0ck) reviewed in his blog. 

Long story short: In that M-ITX space, with a passively cooled CPU, the CPU could handle transcoding three 1080p streams at the same time and only hit 86% CPU usage on FreeNAS with Plex. The temperature was around 55C IIRC. So it holds up pretty well imo.