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
Sleeping Dogs
Sleeping Dogs is a benchmarking wet dream – a highly complex benchmark that can bring the toughest setup and high resolutions down into single figures. Having an extreme SSAO setting can do that, but at the right settings Sleeping Dogs is highly playable and enjoyable. We run the basic benchmark program laid out in the Adrenaline benchmark tool, and the Xtreme (1920x1080, Maximum) performance setting, noting down the average frame rates and the minimum frame rates.
| Sleeping Dogs, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
| Average Frame Rates | ||
| Minimum Frame Rates | ||
Company of Heroes 2
Company of Heroes 2 also can bring a top end GPU to its knees, even at very basic benchmark settings. To get an average 30 FPS using a normal GPU is a challenge, let alone a minimum frame rate of 30 FPS. For this benchmark I use modified versions of Ryan’s batch files at 1920x1080 on High. COH2 is a little odd in that it does not scale with more GPUs with the drivers we use.
| Company of Heroes 2, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
| Average Frame Rates | ||
| Minimum Frame Rates | ||
Battlefield 4
The EA/DICE series that has taken countless hours of my life away is back for another iteration, using the Frostbite 3 engine. AMD is also piling its resources into BF4 with the new Mantle API for developers, designed to cut the time required for the CPU to dispatch commands to the graphical sub-system. For our test we use the in-game benchmarking tools and record the frame time for the first ~70 seconds of the Tashgar single player mission, which is an on-rails generation of and rendering of objects and textures. We test at 1920x1080 at Ultra settings.
| Battlefield 4, 1080p Max | ||
| NVIDIA | AMD | |
| Average Frame Rates | ||
| 99th Percentile Frame Rates | ||
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
85 Comments
View All Comments
A5 - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
For HTPC, I'd think you would probably want to get a small GPU for decode help anyway, so that would be where your audio comes from as well.bernstein - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
yeah it's a shame this doesn't come with a hdmi connector... then i'd be sold. even though i wouldn't use any of the sata plugs and just hook a sas controller+expander up to it...hdmi + ecc + pcie x8 capability cpu+mobo for $400 would be a steal
slayernine - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
QNAP's Intel Atom models have HDMI.bernstein - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
yeah if only they had fanless 10+ bay models for less than $1000.bernstein - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
oh and one that runs zfsGralgrathor - Thursday, May 21, 2015 - link
10+ disks without cooling? They won't last a day... And why would you need a hdmi-connector on a server mobo?DanNeely - Tuesday, April 29, 2014 - link
At $400 it's priced out of the core HTPC market; it's clearly intended as an entry level large storage server. As pointed out below, the spaghetti explosion from wiring a dozen drives with individual cables makes it unsuitable for most enterprise use (or prosumers who know better).Samus - Wednesday, April 30, 2014 - link
For $400 you could put together a better HTPC/NAS combo solution with an AMD AM1 ITX system and an Areca SAS RAID card in a PCIe slot. You'd get a superior onboard GPU with HDMI, native USB 3.0, and a better RAID card, not some Marvell crap.Athlon 5350 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
ASUS AM1 ITX http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Areca PCIe 8-port SAS http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
This motherboard is interesting and ASRock is a solid consumer OEM, but it's a little premature of them to be getting into rack space.
UpSpin - Wednesday, April 30, 2014 - link
You don't have to buy the overpriced octa core board, but could buy the identical quad core version ASRock C2550D4I for $280.http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Your mainboard doesn't support ECC RAM and your SAS Controller only supports 8 SATA drives without further expanders. Together with the two SATA connectors on the mainboard you got only 10.
The quad core has an even lower TDP of 14W vs. 20W of the octa version. The C2750 has a faster CPU compared to your Athlon 5350.
The only disadvantage is the poor IGP. Considering that this is more a storage/server board, less a HTPC (who wants 12 noisy hard drives in the living room?) and the unbeatable price, it's a very interesting porduct in my opinion.
Samus - Friday, May 2, 2014 - link
Well, UpSpin, that would be why I said 'htpc/nas'If you purely want a NAS, there are probably better solutions than what I outlined, but for a hybrid (and who is to say the NAS wont be SSD's or 2.5" 2TB drives that are dead silent) this board, like Ian pointed out, is kind of a joke for an HTPC solution. It is VERY market specific, and virtually ALL AT readers aren't part of that market. This board is grossly overpriced, especially for something with ASRocks name on it. Even cold-storage servers should have USB 3.0 or eSATA. and quality products don't use some buggy $3.00 Marvell chipset that wipes arrays at random.