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
Scientific and Synthetic Benchmarks
2D to 3D Rendering –Agisoft PhotoScan v1.0: link
Agisoft Photoscan creates 3D models from 2D images, a process which is very computationally expensive. The algorithm is split into four distinct phases, and different phases of the model reconstruction require either fast memory, fast IPC, more cores, or even OpenCL compute devices to hand. Agisoft supplied us with a special version of the software to script the process, where we take 50 images of a stately home and convert it into a medium quality model. This benchmark typically takes around 15-20 minutes on a high end PC on the CPU alone, with GPUs reducing the time.
Console Emulation –Dolphin Benchmark: link
At the start of 2014 I was emailed with a link to a new emulation benchmark based on the Dolphin Emulator. The issue with emulators tends to be two-fold: game licensing and raw CPU power required for the emulation. As a result, many emulators are often bound by single thread CPU performance, and general reports tended to suggest that Haswell provided a significant post to emulator performance. This benchmark runs a Wii program that raytraces a complex 3D scene inside the Dolphin Wii emulator. Performance on this benchmark is a good proxy of the speed of Dolphin CPU emulation, which is an intensive single core task using most aspects of a CPU. Results are given in minutes, where the Wii itself scores 17.53; meaning that anything above this is faster than an actual Wii for processing Wii code, albeit emulated.
Emulation is clearly not a target for Avoton.
Point Calculations – 3D Movement Algorithm Test: link
3DPM is a self-penned benchmark, taking basic 3D movement algorithms used in Brownian Motion simulations and testing them for speed. High floating point performance, MHz and IPC wins in the single thread version, whereas the multithread version has to handle the threads and loves more cores.
As the 3DPM test abuses the ability for a CPU to dispatch threads and FP calculations, Intel have historically been good here. The CPU battles with AMD in single threaded, but the 8 cores allows software to exploit parallelism in this manner.
Encryption –TrueCrypt v0.7.1a: link
TrueCrypt is an off the shelf open source encryption tool for files and folders. For our test we run the benchmark mode using a 1GB buffer and take the mean result from AES encryption.
For AES software encryption, the Avoton platform enjoys the 8 cores but suffers from a lack of hardware acceleration, putting it in the region of the AMD CPUs.
Synthetic – 7-Zip 9.2: link
As an open source compression tool, 7-Zip is a popular tool for making sets of files easier to handle and transfer. The software offers up its own benchmark, to which we report the result.
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mars2k - Saturday, May 31, 2014 - link
I'm with you Up, how did this get sidetrac'd into HTPC, I'm looking for an alternative to some of the stock Qnap and Synology geer for use in my home. Want NAS box with lots of tru put. Not clear on why Ian says no NAS. Whats up with configuring as a NAS? Any other suggestionssamueldes - Thursday, November 27, 2014 - link
Before you buy: the Areca PCIe X8 card won't fit in the ASUS AM1 board with only one PCIe X4 slot.Ammohunt - Wednesday, April 30, 2014 - link
Avoton supports intels visualization extensions with 64GB of RAM and 8 cores it could be a decent low powered KVM server sliced up in many different ways.stoatwblr - Wednesday, April 30, 2014 - link
I have to say I'm surprised they didn't go with minisas connectors instead of a fistful of satas. Supermicro have done the same thing and it simply doesn't make sense.Samus - Friday, May 2, 2014 - link
yeah they could have saved a ton of real estate using mini plugs. Even full sized servers like HP's ML310 series use mini plugs to keep the board clean. Even more important on an ITX board. This board has a lot of oversights, which ASRock will learn is unacceptable in the market they're targeting it at.ericloewe - Friday, May 2, 2014 - link
Bad idea in this case, since they're using SATA instead of SAS. Someone would inevitably try to use this with an SAS expander...But I agree with Supermicro having made an odd choice. Their LSI2308-equipped motherboards would be perfectly equipped with SAS connectors.
speculatrix - Sunday, May 4, 2014 - link
if you're looking more for a media player you can plug into your TV, then one of the many other Baytrail-D motherboards would be suitable... there's a useful list and discussion of them here:http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php...
bernstein - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
i'm probably one of the core target prosumers for this, as for a few years now i've been running something similar at home...namely a sandybridge itx board, 35 Watt i3, ecc ram, supermicro low profile (lsi) sas controller, supermicro 24x (lsi) sas expander backplane, 400w passive psu, passive cpu cooler, 18 sata 2.5" hdds (5200rpm - WD scorpio blue / hitachi travelstar)
and while this board fits my requirements wonderfully while being cheap there is just one dealbreaker... 12x sata? wtf? no-one sane will run so many hdds without a backplane. it's just unmanageable.
the most simple backplane with 12 sata plugs + some power plugs & 12 correctly spaced hdd plugs woud do. and could be manufactured & sold very cheaply. but there is no such thing... (step up asrock :)
bernstein - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
to the point: give me such a backplane for below $100 and im sold. else thanks but no thanks.ZeDestructor - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
With 18 drives, you might want to consider a BackBlaze pod with room for 45 drives, especially now that we have 32 and 40 disk controllers. That with some ZFS would be quite an excellent NAS IMO, and I am heading that way, slowly.