In my last post I did an overview and comparison of the Intel Atom C2750 CPU. If you missed it, you may want to go back and give it a read. Don't worry, I'll wait here for you to return ... Back? Great! Today, I'm taking a look at some motherboards with this CPU embedded as well as a system build spec using one of these boards.
I love the Mini-ITX form factor. It started out with boards for very low end CPUs and has progressed to where today you can get boards for full-power desktop and server CPUs. Intel's new Atom server chips were designed specifically with this form factor in mind.
The first boards to come to market featuring this chip are from ASRock and SUPERMICRO - each of which have their own unique set of features & specifications. It's not unusual to find boards from different manufacturers to be almost like "clones" of each other, but that is definitely NOT the case here.
ASRock C2750D4I
First up, let's have a look at the ASRock C2750D4I. ASRock has taken a very interesting approach to this board. If you take a look at the photo, the first thing you'll likely notice is there's an abundance of SATA ports. You might also notice that there's no fan on top of the CPU heat sink.
The missing fan should be fairly obvious when you consider that the chip only uses 20W of power. If you feel the need, you can mount a 40mm fan on top of the heatsink to provide some air flow, though you do so at the cost of fan noise. If your system has decent enough airflow through it, my opinion is that the CPU fan would most likely be unnecessary.
Let's take a look at the board specs ...
2 - Marvell SE9172
4 - Marvell SE9230
ASRock has packed a lot onto such a little board - adding two extra SATA controllers to the board to allow for a total of 12 ports! It's obvious what the designers had in mind for this board - LOTS of storage! Using the 8 SATA III ports alone, if you connect a 4TB drive to each port you have the potential for 32TB of total storage! While there's no built in RAID capabilities for all those ports, you can always setup software RAID. If you're using Linux as the OS, "mdadm" works extremely well.
Another interesting design consideration of this board was the decision to use full sized DIMM slots considering the space they use up on the board. I think the decision here was wanting to allow for users to have up to the 64GB maximum that the CPU can support, whereas SO-DIMM modules right now can't get you quite that high.
The inclusion of a IPMI management port is a very nice feature allowing for headless remote management / KVM capabilities. ASRock warranties this board for 3 years parts and labor which is also nice.
The largest shortcoming I see with this board is with the decision to only feature dual gigabit LAN over quad ports. With as much data storage potential as this board represents, depending on the environment it's deployed in, the extra network bandwidth would be welcome to avoid any potential network bottlenecks. Of course, if necessary, and if it's not already in use, you can always add a multi-port network adapter to the single PCI-E 8x slot on board to remedy this problem, though at added cost.
I would have liked to see a Type-A USB port "internal" to the board itself, but considering how much has been packed onto the board already this is a minor point.
SUPERMICRO MBD-A1SAi-2750F-O
SUPERMICRO has taken a somewhat different approach with their MBD-A1SAi-2750F-O board. (Wow what a product name!) Taking a look at the board, you'll notice immediately some of the differences. In this case, SUPERMICRO decided to use SO-DIMM slots to save on board space. You'll also notice that they did not add the extra SATA ports like ASRock did.
Again, like the ASRock there's a heat sink but no fan. A 20W CPU really just doesn't need it. Let's have a look at the specs ...
2 - USB 3.0
1 - Type-A on board itself
Unlike the ASRock offering, this board features the standard 6 SATA ports supported by the chip - 2 x SATA III and 4 x SATA II. Again, there is no built in RAID capabilities, but software RAID is always an option.
SUPERMICRO decided to go with quad gigabit LAN ports allowing for very high network bandwidth. Instead of having to use the single PCI-E 8x slot for additional network ports it can be used if needed for a hardware RAID controller or for an adapter to connect to an external SAS enclosure.
With the limited number of SATA ports but the inclusion of the quad LAN ports, it seems clear that the designers had more network-centric use in mind for this board. Applications like a network gateway, load balancing server, or even serving web pages would work very well.
I was glad to see that SUPERMICRO decided to include a Type-A USB port on the board, and that they too included an IPMI management port. Setting up and managing a server without having to sit down at it with a monitor and keyboard plugged in is a welcome thing.
As I mentioned already, the board uses smaller SO-DIMM modules to conserve space, but at the cost of memory capacity. Not that 32GB of memory is anything to scoff at and for most applications of this board should be sufficient. While this is a drawback, it's not a very major one in my opinion. SUPERMICRO warranties the board for 1 year parts / 3 years labor. Not nearly as nice of a warranty as ASRock. Something to keep in mind if you're deciding between the two.
My Thoughts
If I had to choose between these two boards, my decision is going to lay with what the targeted application of the server will be. I do think though that I would lean toward the SUPERMICRO board for most applications because of the quad LAN ports. Even though it supports half the RAM of the ASRock board, I feel that 32GB is still enough for the applications these boards will be used for. If I were using the server as a SQL server I might want the extra memory. Given the limited CPU power of the Atom chip compared to other server processors, if my SQL server needed to expand beyond 32GB of RAM it likely also would need extra processing power to go with it.
If your application requires hosting VMs on the server, unless your VMs require huge amounts of disk space, I still think that the SUPERMICRO board is the better option of the two - again because of the network bandwidth available to it.
The only application that I could see me using the ASRock board for would be as a NAS system where storage capacity is paramount over everything. In this case, if the network becomes a bottleneck, adding the extra NIC is trivial. If the warranty is a major concern for you, then the ASRock should garner extra consideration, but not at the expense of fitting your system requirements.
System Build
Now for the real fun. I don't know about you, but I love piecing together computer systems. I mentioned at the end of my last post that I'd love to have one of these boards for a server to host some testing VMs and a GIT repository. Here I'll detail what I'd personally want to build for that purpose with links to each product.
A few notes about the parts chosen. I've already covered my thoughts on the motherboard. Memory was chosen due to there being not many ECC SO-DIMM modules available and Kingston has always produced quality chips. The Mushkin SSDs have terrific performance without breaking the budget. The Seagate HDDs are designed for servers & NAS enclosures and will work well within the small Mini-ITX case while delivering good performance. The Fractal Design Node 304 has plenty of room for the system while also allowing for excellent airflow through the system. Corsair makes fabulous products - their PSUs are no exception. This model will deliver plenty of power, fit inside the case, and is highly efficient. Lastly, the Noctua fans can not be beat for performance and fan noise. They cost as much as they do for a very simple reason - they're the best fans you can buy.
I hope you've enjoyed this look into the Intel Atom C2750 and motherboards featuring it. I'd love to hear your thoughts about them or even what kind of system you would build with one. Leave your thoughts in the comments below! Thanks for reading!