ASRock Launches EPC621D4I-2M Mini-ITX Motherboard for Intel Xeon LGA-3647
The ASRock Rack EPC621D4I-2M Motherboard
ASRock is no stranger to shrinking powerful platforms down to sizes others companies might fear to reach, and their ASRock Rack EPC621D4I-2M motherboard is another example of this. This mini-ITX board is based on Intel’s C621 chipset and offers an LGA-3647 socket for Intel’s Skylake-SP and Cascade Lake-SP Xeons – up to a max 205W TDP, that is.
As impressive as it is to make an LGA-3647 socket fit into mini-ITX with four memory slots (SoDIMM, of course), there isn’t a lot of room left for things like a beefy VRM (and large VRM heatsinks). Can 6-phase power and small heatsinks cope with the realities of up to 205W TDP processor loads? And what cooler might work in a tiny server setup based on this board? HWP.ru (Russian language) has a review of the board which we found via WCCFtech, with details on their build and many more images – along with some benchmark results.
"When the Intel Xeon processors of the LGA-3647 series only appeared, many experts joked that this processor socket is so large that it is impossible to make a Mini-iTX board on it. And ASRock Rack showed the world that nothing is impossible for them, and if you need Xeon Scalable on a nettop board, please, the company has an EPC621D4I-2M motherboard for you."
Why though?
better question, how much?
$2Damn or thereabouts haha
As for the why, probably just to show off an engineering feat and b/c they could. On a practical level, I suppose it could be used in a high density HPC cluster though cooling would be challenging. Also those poor VRMs haha.
Oh dang it, after this switch to new website I was tearing – what little /hi Josh! :)/ – hair I have left to get comments working. Finally it clicked.
Anyway. With relation to this motherboard. I would treat that as an April’s Fools joke if it was April 1st, but it is May 8th. Amazing how AsRock crammed all that stuff into mITX. I think a bit overkill as mATX would be far more practical from connectivity point of view, but impressive feat nevertheless.
How about dual Xeon 2066 mATX AsRock? You know you want it! 😀
So, you see this a a ‘Hold my beer.’ kind of project?
Because I can’t see any practical use for it.
As far as use in a high density server, I assume you mean packing a bunch of systems into a small area. If that’s the case, then the task quickly falls down to packaging density–which is often power supplies, cabling, and cooling. Things this board won’t do well at. “Those poor VRMs”, indeed. 205W worth of DC/DC conversion is going to need better cooling if you want a reliable system.
Serve the Home has a review up today so for an in-depth look with performance numbers check that out here:
https://www.servethehome.com/asrock-rack-epc621d4i-2m-motherboard-review/