We stopped by the ASRock Rack booth at Computex 2016 to check out the latest in server technologies and what new things they had brought along. Without much hesitation we can say, we weren’t disappointed with what we saw. Power efficiency is taking on new levels whenever the manufacturing process improves and as such we’ve seen impressive things, that also goes for the server market.
We’ve seen how effective the Intel Xeon-D series are in our previous reviews and that’s the same ASRock used for their highest density I/O virtualization HPC Grade Microserver: 16 nodes in a 3U form factor.
With 16 nodes you get 16 CPUs, each with plenty of storage and memory support for an impressive microserver.
It doesn’t stop at those basics tho, each node also features 50Gbps Ethernet connections for fully utilize all that power.
Onto each node, you can install two DDR4 ECC So-DIMM modules, one M.2 NVMe SSD, one 2.5-inch NVMe or SATA3 SSD as well as an SATA DOM. That is pretty nice on its own and adding that up 16 times makes it even sweeter.
Thanks to the use of platinum-rated power supplies, this server will make the best use of its power.
Oh, and it is a beauty on top of that. Just look at it.
ASRock Rack also has a nice 2U server with them aimed at storage oriented tasks. The ASRock Rack 2U4N-R/24S features 24 drive bays and can hold two Xeon CPUs and motherboards based on the C612 chipset per node.
Whether you’ll be using these drive bays for fast SSDs or large 10TB mechanical drives, the server should deliver as expected.
Oh, and I should also mention that this is a 4 node system that is powered by a 1200W Platinum rated PSU.
We will be back with more Computex 2016 coverage shortly, so stay tuned for more.
