ASRock Rack C2750D4I Review: A Storage Motherboard with Management
by Ian Cutress on April 29, 2014 9:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Storage
- Atom
- ASRock
- Silvermont
- Enterprise
- server
- Avoton
Silverstone was clearly monitoring the forums with regards to the C2750D4I in order to come out with a case designed amound the concept. Our Silverstone contact also became aware that we had the motherboard in for testing and volunteered its DS380 for a quick overview. I installed the motherboard in to the case along with my rag-tag collection of storage drives (four 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.14, one 2TB Western Digital Green and one 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda 7200.11) which were previously spread out across several systems.
The case has a top mounted power-supply section (we used the Silverstone 300W SFF PSU) and places the C2750D4I upside down, with space for an 11” dual slot GPU. For PSUs that have a top/bottom mounted fan, Silverstone’s design means that the airflow for it is out of the case.
The rear of the case has a single 120mm fan installed, and the side of the case (for blowing onto the drives) uses two 120mm fans – all three were included in our retail sample. The fans use a dimpled design to reduce fan noise.
The drive area uses a backplane, and SATA cables from the motherboard attach to this. Users can install SAS drives using both SATA ports.
The case is designed for hot-swap systems, and as such the front eight bays allow the drives to be removed.
The front of the case has two USB ports, with the connector inside capable of being placed in a USB 3.0 header. This is where the case differs in being ideal for the C2750, as there are no USB 3.0 headers on board. Had Silverstone offered this connector as a USB 3.0/USB 2.0 hybrid, this would have been more ideal. There are two audio jacks as well should a user decide to place a different mini-ITX motherboard in the case and can take advantage of eight drive bays via an expansion card.
The front of the case is also lockable, although the key design is not a unique one. It does stop little ones pulling a drive out however.
The case is not a tool-less design, but a standard screwdriver is all I needed to put the system together. Because the C2750D4I has a small heatsink, cable management was easy enough, although the placement of the 24-pin ATX power connector meant that the cable had to go all the way across the motherboard. At the top we also have the 4 bays for 2.5” drives:
Silverstone suggested the 300W PSU that we used for the build, but if a PCIe device was installed we would have had to have used a 24-pin extension cable. Similarly, the SATA cables suggested had a small issue on the bottom SATA port:
Using my own ears (unfortunately I am not equipped to measure audio performance), the three fans installed, when active, were audible enough to disturb quiet scenes in a movie and you might not want it nearby overnight, but certainly silent compared to my normal PC or the busy road I live next to. Temperature readings from the CPU gave 40ºC at idle and 53ºC at load. Total power draw, at the wall with my drives installed using the 300W PSU on a 240V line was 52 W at idle.
Ganesh also has this motherboard in to test and will be examining the storage performance in due course.
| Silverstone DS380 | |
| Price | Link |
| Model Name | SST-DS380B |
| Material | Aluminium door, SECC body |
| Motherboard Size | Mini-ITX, DTX |
| Drive Bays |
8 x 3.5"/2.5" Hot Swappable 4 x 2.5" |
| Cooling |
1 x Rear 120mm 1200 RPM 22 dBA 2 x Side 120mm 1200 RPM 22 dBA |
| Expansion Slots | 2 |
| Front IO |
2 x USB 3.0 1 x Headphone 1 x Microphone |
| PSU | SFX |
| Expansion Card | 11" x 4.38" |
| CPU Cooler | 57 mm |
| Dimensions |
211 mm x 285 mm x 360 mm 21.6 liters |
| Warranty Period | 1 Year |
| Product Page | Link |
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S.D.Leary - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
Actually, for the SMB/Home version I was thinking more along the lines of keeping all the management, but dropping the TPM.Dropping BOTH extra SATA switches. (No real need for these on a home Media Server, and honestly for many/most SMB, four 6TB drives would be more than enough)
Updating USB to 3.1 status
A digital video output.
Dropping the COM port
Thunderbolt 2 for external expansion (that way a SMB that was growing could add a storage chassis if needed)
And for Silverstone, a chassis with similar capabilities to the DS380, but with the following changes...
Drop 3.5" support. Ideally 4 Hot Swap 2.5" external bays, and one or two internal 2.5" bays.
An option for a Slim Optical drive.
Preferably a horizontal orientation to fit into an A/V setting.
Support for double wide normal graphics cards. This would probably necessitate a riser and horizontal orientation of the card.
Ian! A question for you. Do you have something that could test real time transcoding of Audio and Video? Both with and without a GPU?
SDLeary
Computer Bottleneck - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
I like the idea of the consumer version as well.Make mine a C2550 and no additional SATA controllers. (SOC has six native SATA).
LastQuark - Monday, May 5, 2014 - link
You're looking at the wrong board. Check Bay Trail solutions. It will be perfect for your needs.swizeus - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
Interesting as how Anandtech includes gaming benchmark for a storage centric motherboard, and with a decent card, it still be able to cope. What can you expect from a 25W CPU thoughLastQuark - Monday, May 5, 2014 - link
+1. It was a gross oversight of what this board is intended for.-=Hulk=- - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
1. All recent Atoms (including Avaton's) support hardware AES acceleration:http://ark.intel.com/products/77987
2. 43W idle for the 5350??? What the hell??? I think your values are totally wrong....
50W for the C2758??? Look at that test with a similar Supermicro Mini-ITX motherboard:
http://www.servethehome.com/intel-avoton-rangeley-...
Ian Cutress - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
Values aren't wrong, but the PSU is inefficient. Those values are also a full system build. I have to keep the same power supply across reviews for meaningful comparisons on the same efficiency curve, which I mention in the blurb above the power readings. I also mention that due to that fact, it's more a qualitative comparison than a quantitative.DanNeely - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
I understand why you're using the same PSU for all your tests. But for really small/low power systems I'd suggest adding a second power test with a much smaller PSU, similar to how the old cast thermal tests for small enclosures were often done with both a big high power GPU and a small lower power one. The 1250W monster would allow for direct comparison with high power gaming systems; a second number from a ~250W PSU would provide a second number that would be more inline with typical use.watersb - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
Wow! Thanks for writing about this one! I build small-office storage servers, and this might be exactly what we need!watersb - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
"Users have been reporting that in Linux and FreeBSD, high intensity read/write workloads cause the controller to reset and elements to any software array are lost."Hmm. Not good. I see this with Sil3132 controllers, too. The PCIe x8 slot would let me install a modest controller like the old Intel/LSI SASUCI8, but that push the system price back into SuperMicro territory.