ASRock Rack Launches Mini-ITX Server Board With Embedded Xeon E3-1500 V5

By Kevin Carbotte
published

Intel just launched a brand new Xeon processor at Computex today. The Xeon E3-1500 V5 features much higher graphics performance thanks to the Intel Iris Pro P580 IGP (GT4e) that Intel crammed inside the die (read more about the processor here). ASRock didn’t skip a beat preparing for the new processors. The company has already launched a board with an embedded version of the Xeon processor.

The ASRock Rack C236WSI4 is a mini-ITX motherboard designed for mini servers and black systems. The board features an embedded Xeon E3-1500 v5 BGA processor, four DDR4 ECC SODIMM slots and six SATA III ports. The board includes a single PCIe 3.0 x16 slot so that you can add a graphics card, but that's not entirely necessary thanks to the GT4e graphics controller.

The C236WSI4 includes D-sub and HDMI connections to leverage the included IGP. ASRock Rack also managed to fit lots of gigabit Ethernet onto the board: two Intel i210 controllers and two Intel i219 controllers.

ASRock Rack did not reveal the price of the board and CPU combo, but the company said it's available now.

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Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

6 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bit_user
    Yum. Should have 10 Gigabit, though. And is that a VGA connector I spy?!?
    Reply
  • Darkk
    This would make a nice FreeNAS server.
    Reply
  • Valantar
    This should have been around when I built my combo HTPC/NAS. Although it'll probably cost an arm and a leg (and my build was low-budget), it looks pretty amazing. 6 SATA ports for mass storage, m.2 for a boot drive (PCIe?), a more than decent iGPU, PCIe x16 for better graphics or RAID down the line, and quad ethernet to act like a firewall/router all the while? That's amazing. Hopefully it supports non-ECC memory as well, and preferably at higher speeds than 2133 MHz.

    That heatsink looks like crap, though. Would need to be replaced, for sure.
    Reply
  • Eman25th
    Yum. Should have 10 Gigabit, though. And is that a VGA connector I spy?!?

    it has 4x 10GbE ports, this board is perfect for homelab use.
    Reply
  • Casper42
    it has 4x 10GbE ports, this board is perfect for homelab use.

    No, it has 4 x *1* Gb NICs.
    http://asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=C236%20WSI#Specifications
    The Intel 200 series is all 1 Gb.
    Their 10Gb NICs start in the 500 series and continue with the 700 series. X520, X710, XL710, etc.
    Reply
  • heat_death51
    Would this be overkill for a home NAS unit?
    Reply