Review on 🖥️ AsRock Rack X470D4U Micro ATX Server Motherboard: AM4 Ryzen & Ryzen 7nm PGA1331 AMD X470 by Kevin Pirlet

In the foreword I want to say that I run Unraid on this motherboard with several Windows virtual machines (XP and Win10) and several Docker containers 24/7 and this motherboard has been very stable for me for about 6 years Year old. Months. However, this review is presented solely through the lens of an unraid server deployment and may not be relevant to everyone. PROS Obviously, the presence of server management features in this form factor pretty much makes you look at this motherboard or nothing at all. A few months ago I checked the "Open Box" offer and it arrived well packaged and with all the relevant paperwork. The manual is usable, although it lacks important details in many areas (especially the descriptions of the BIOS menus) and was clearly translated from Chinese by a non-native speaker. The norm for the course, and I don't give them a star for that. The machine booted into POST on the first try, and I was greeted by the extensive BIOS, to say the least. This was my first experience with a BIOS designed to manage servers outside of Dell rack servers and I was blown away by the manageability and options available to me. I can honestly say as a craftsman I touched maybe 5% of the options here. The potential is overwhelming. Fan control, DIMM voltage adjustment, standby power, hardware monitoring, remote security features, and literally dozens of other menus that are still completely unfamiliar to me. An experienced user can benefit a lot from options in the BIOS. In the mATX form factor, it's good to have 4 DIMM slots, 2 full-height PCIe slots (more on that later), and 4 PCIe slots. like 2x M.2 slots, 8x SATA ports, TONS of fan connectors, and more different headers on the bottom than I can handle. Capable of handling a whole tower of parts, this board is once again stunning with its versatility. This board is power efficient when idle with a GTX 1660 Super, 4x Enterprise SAS HDDs, 2x NVME drives, 2x SSDs, Ryzen 5 1600, 2x fans and only 40W AIO CPU cooler. Its chipset copes well with heat: I haven't noticed any significant throttling at high, but not alarming, temperatures. Onboard diagnostics, BIOS flashing, firmware reset buttons, and more. This board really offers features that are truly unique in this form factor for this chipset with this socket. Amazing innovation and market awareness from ASRock.THE BADOk so this board is not perfect. I'll start with what I believe to be a design flaw I'm currently suffering from, but this could be a handicap for many potential buyers. There is a fundamental and inherent inconsistency in layout and power supply: you have three PCIe lanes competing for space and electronics, and there are no ideal configurations to maximize this board's potential. First layout. From top to bottom, ASRock has included a 16x, 4x and another 16x physical set of PCIe slots. That should be good news for enthusiasts: on paper, you've got room for a modern graphics card, a sound card to make up for the lack of onboard audio, and still an expansion slot for things like extra USB headers or, in my case, a SAS controller. Life is supposed to be beautiful, right? NOT CORRECT. Although they clearly have room for a 4x slot located ABOVE the main 16x slot, ASRock has instead chosen to place a 4x slot between two 16x slots. This means if you are using a 2 slot graphics card you will never be able to use a 4 slot slot. Second, electronics. The primary and secondary PCIe slots have 16x lanes. That's absurd! If you have something plugged into the second 16x slot, all 8x of its power will be drawn from the main 16x slot, not the 4x slot as you might expect. This means you have to choose whether your GPU gets full bandwidth and performance OR run an add-in card on a secondary physical 16x lane and both cards run at 8x performance. In my opinion, this is a serious shortcoming, even if it only affects a few users. I can't think of a good reason for the lanes to be distributed this way, rather than isolating the main 16x lane and getting a little extra power to split the 12x to the remaining slots. Remember how the first 16x slot blocks the 4x slot with dual slot graphics. Map? That's right, you will ALWAYS be leaving 4x the performance and bandwidth on the table and if you try to use an additional 16x physical slot you will feel that loss. Why ASRock couldn't assign a baseband is a big question for me with this board. The moment you add a full-size GPU to an assembly with this board, you inherently limit the net effective performance of the machine due to PCIe design mismanagement. The above is particularly true and is underscored by the fact that this board has no onboard audio. . Again, this is a niche requirement as far as workstation boards go, and I understand that, but ASRock, historically a common man's company, should have seen this problem miles away in the development phase: If you want to play online with voice communications ( Hello, it It's 2020 and everyone needs voice on their computers), you'll have to choose between serial voice protocols (rather than analog) OR power your GPU with the 16x lanes these products are designed for. except for the PCIe lane. I can't say anything negative about this board in terms of design. I'd rather see at least one USB 2.0 port somewhere on the board, particularly in the I/O panel, but that doesn't give me much heartburn. CONCLUSION I recommend this board. I'm really. I sing it from mountaintop to mountaintop. But deep down I know it could be way, way better. I hope ASRock develops a successor board that solves these problems. Unraid users looking to run AMD Small Form Factor (or any other form factor) with true server capabilities BUY THESE BLADES.