Thursday, June 15th 2023

AsRock Rack Produces First Ever Intel W790 Deep Micro ATX Mainboard, Can Run 56-Core W3400 Xeon CPUs

Tech tipster momomo_us yesterday spotted that ASRock Rack had listed a new and interesting looking motherboard on its product website, albeit in a "preliminary" category—so pricing and availability have "to be determined" status currently. The W790D8UD-1L1N2T/BCM is a new addition to the company's selection of compact workstation boards, but it distinguishes itself by being the first example of a W790 chipset Deep Micro ATX mainboard with platform support for Intel's latest "Sapphire Rapids" Xeon W-2400 and W-3400 processors. The single E-type socket (LGA 4677) looks absolutely huge relative to the overall dimensions of its surroundings (264 × 266 mm). The Deep Micro ATX form factor is exclusive to AsRock Rack so it could be tricky to build with a W790D8UD-1L1N2T/BCM board, given that mainstream PC cases may not provide full compatibility with this proprietary configuration.

ASRock Rack W790D8UD-1L1N2T/BCM is capable of running up to 56 cores (the minimum being 6) and 2 TB of DDR5-4800 modules (eight DIMM slots) with a peak bandwidth of 307.2 GB/s, via the platform's advanced memory subsystem. Sapphire Rapids Xeon W processors can control up to 112 PCIe Gen 5 lanes (W-3400) and 64 PCIe Gen 5 lanes (W-2400). Tom's Hardware has kindly collated the rest of the specifications into sentence form: "As for the physical connectivity, the motherboard is equipped with four PCIe x16 slots, one M.2-2280 slot with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface attached to the W790 PCH, and two OCuLink connectors for SSDs. Network connectivity includes two 10GbE ports controlled by Broadcom BCM57416, a GbE connector managed by the Intel I226, and another GbE handled by the Intel I210. In addition, it has a dedicated GbE port for remote management with the support of Aspeed AST2600 BMC, that is handled by the Realtek RTL8211F. The board also has an SPI connector for TPM modules, USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a COM port, and a D-Sub VGA display connector."
Sources: Tom's Hardware, VideoCardz, momomo_us Tweet, AsRock Rack
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6 Comments on AsRock Rack Produces First Ever Intel W790 Deep Micro ATX Mainboard, Can Run 56-Core W3400 Xeon CPUs

#1
Avlin
slick, efficient

all motherboard should be as simple as that. 8 dimms 4 pcie x16 and 12v only power
Posted on Reply
#2
Wirko
Avlinslick, efficient

all motherboard should be as simple as that. 8 dimms 4 pcie x16 and 12v only power
If you mean all Xeon and Threadripper boards, that would actually be possible. And yes, this is a very nice looking board.
Posted on Reply
#3
HBSound
Avlinslick, efficient

all motherboard should be as simple as that. 8 dimms 4 pcie x16 and 12v only power
Now your talking! I agree! I personally have my eyes on this board. I hope the price point is not through the roof!
I now have the Asus WRX80 board. Nice board, but you realize you could have gotten the job done with half the motherboard.
Posted on Reply
#4
kondamin
Why does it have 5 network interfaces?
I could understand 3 but 5?
Posted on Reply
#5
Mr. Perfect
kondaminWhy does it have 5 network interfaces?
I could understand 3 but 5?
I don't know either. The two 10Gb make sense, and one of the 1Gb is for management, but what are the other two 1Gb NICs for? 1Gb isn't really fast enough to do much with these days. They wouldn't spend the money if there wasn't a reason though. Anyone know?

Also, I'm a little disappointed there isn't a DP on there. Apparently everyone the world over has a VGA only KVM somehow, so the VGA is necessary, but it's actually getting dificult to find monitors with VGA now. Building a standalone server/workstation with this is going to need some dinky little addon graphics card for a modern output, which is a bit of a waste of an x16 slot.
Posted on Reply
#6
Wirko
Mr. PerfectI don't know either. The two 10Gb make sense, and one of the 1Gb is for management, but what are the other two 1Gb NICs for? 1Gb isn't really fast enough to do much with these days. They wouldn't spend the money if there wasn't a reason though. Anyone know?

Also, I'm a little disappointed there isn't a DP on there. Apparently everyone the world over has a VGA only KVM somehow, so the VGA is necessary, but it's actually getting dificult to find monitors with VGA now. Building a standalone server/workstation with this is going to need some dinky little addon graphics card for a modern output, which is a bit of a waste of an x16 slot.
The Aspeed controller can transmit video over IP, but I don't know what equipment you need to display that video.
Posted on Reply
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