ASRock Brings 56-Core Xeon W3400 to Deep MicroATX

[khaki54]

Looks interesting, not sure what "deep" MicroATX is other than being out of spec for MicroATX by about 19 sq. inches. I like the high core count of the Xeon processors but 15x price premium over top of the line desktop/or enthusiast CPUs is hard to justify for anything outside large corporation or research activity.

Old hotness: Building a computer in a huge EATX case with lots of room to work, multi-gpu SLI, and massive airflow for overclocking that fits (12) 3.5" HDD.

New hotness: Building a computer in custom mini/microatx form factor w/ watercooling and massive amount of cores and memory running nearly silent

[bee_rider]

I did a mini ATX build, it is a good way to get some of the old fashioned PC building flavor: Working with terribly un-ergonomic cases, and worrying about compatibility issues.

[walrus01]

> Looks interesting, not sure what "deep" MicroATX is other than being out of spec for MicroATX by about 19 sq. inches

Look at the orientation of the ram slots and the fins on the heatsinks, this is clearly designed for 1U and 2U rackmount chassis front to rear airflow. The board being slightly smaller than regular ATX is helpful in fitting more ridiculous-speed 40mm height fans into the center of a chassis that isn't too deep.

[nickstinemates]

> running nearly silent

That's the play.

[rejectfinite]

Big case + noctua fans is silent too. 0 pump noise. 0 mess with water cooling.

[redroyal]

What is this deep Micro ATX and ITX form factor? I can’t find any cases for it, they’ve made a proprietary standard we need to take a dremel to a regular case to make fit. Anyway why not Genoa? Who’s buying Intel today?

[bitbckt]

I've built machines around these "deep" form factor boards in both Fractal Node 804 and Coolermaster NR200 cases. They fit fine, no surgery required.

As to the latter question, until/unless AMD updates TR Pro, this is the only HEDT option in the DDR5/PCI-e 5.0 era. Whether that matters to you and your needs is another question entirely.

[hknapp]

ASRock is the only company that consistently pushes the limits in smaller form factors

[bitbckt]

Their creativity in these board designs is fun to watch. They have managed to pack so much into that board area, given a little stretch outside the standards. It's a shame Mini-ATX never really caught on.

It must be an interesting culture over there to allow these sorts of designs to get to the retail market outside of their chassis, in comparison to, e.g., SuperMicro WIO designs that don't really fit anything but SM chassis.

[imiric]

I love them specifically for their server motherboards. Very innovative designs with a variety of chipset support and form factors. Well built, reliable, featureful, and relatively inexpensive. They're eating into Supermicro's dominance in the market.

[rewmie]

I'm not sure that's right. Does ASRock have any product in the miniPC market? All I see are brands like Beelink and Minisforum, and they shove Ryzen5/7/9 and Core i5/i7/i9 in boxes similar to raspberry pis.

[accrual]

A CPU socket so dense there is a moiré pattern in the image.

[qwertox]

I'm unhappy with the spacing between the PCIe slots, since many graphics cards are dual slot cards, which means that only the lower slot could be used without obstructing the other ones. Then there's the issue with ventilation, if, for example, you choose to use the remaining slots for 4x or 2x nvme adapter cards (4 times or 2 times 4-lane nvme cards). That huge limitation only for the smaller form factor really hurts.

[titzer]

This is a really cool board! But, it's bizarre that it has a VGA connector and no HDMI.

[accrual]

Surely VGA is simpler to implement than VGA and doesn't carry the burden of HDMI licensing requirements. It's common to see VGA and PS/2 connectors on server boards. A little bit fuzziness on the console output isn't going to stop a sysadmin from getting work done. :)

[toast0]

I've yet to see servers with anything other than VGA. PS/2 keyboard connectors are going away (this one doesn't have one), but there'e too many crash carts built around vga to change for the moment.

[walrus01]

That's absolutely normal for something meant to be in a rackmount server. This is not a desktop workstation board.

[bitbckt]

That's for the IPMI.

[egorfine]

Quote:

> The platform — discovered by @momomo_us

I'm not quite sure what does "discovered" mean here in this article. Does it mean that ASRock was actively trying to hide the product and that an investigation was required?

[lstamour]

Sweet. Space heaters keep getting smaller and more functional! ;-)

[lstamour]

I should clarify, I'm speaking from experience, having built a 9900K system on top of an ASRock mATX board. The water cooling barely fit, and it pumps out heat like no tomorrow. Still, it's undeniably tiny and I irrationally love that build, which I can't say about my previous PC towers. So I'm probably the target market for this...

[Avlin67]

this is dope with a quadro watercooled and high performance watercooling

[pm2222]

I am more interested in a mini pc with amd 7940hx.

[CyberDildonics]

This article is about MicroATX and a 56-Core Xeon

[noncoml]

Price?

[kjs3]

The motherboard looks to be around US$800. The processors look to be (list) around US$1k for a 16/32 and run up to US$12k for a 96/192.