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.