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

This server board is very well designed and has all the features I need: onboard video, 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports, IPMI remote management (industry standard protocol), up to 128GB of ECC memory and enough PCIe 3.0 lanes for two dedicated RAID controllers or 1 dedicated RAID controller + 1 GPU or 2 x GPUs and an onboard SATA RAID controller with M.2 SSD for storage. The use case above still leaves me with one available open - the PCIe x4 expansion slot has run out, which isn't bad at all. Equipped with 64 GB fast 3200 MT/s ECC DDR4 (Kingston stock no. KSM32ED8/32ME), 8C/16T processor (Ryzen 7 2700), + Adaptec RAID controller with its own dedicated DDR cache and SSD cache for hot Data offers me a balanced system. Dedicated RAID offloads the CPU, so my system is well positioned to run multiple virtual machines. Regarding the baseband management controller: If you are not familiar with how NC-SI (Network Controller Sideband Interface) works, you need to be patient and know how to set up your network to be able to use IPMI. Depending on your skill level, the learning curve can be steep. Many people jump to conclusions and express frustration in their reviews, mostly because of a lack of understanding. Since then I have overcome all the obstacles I encountered while working with the motherboard. This is a server board, take your time and know what you are doing. UEFI/BIOS The number of UEFI BIOS options available to configure various Ryzen power, performance, processor L1 cache, and memory controller settings is extensive. I mean very, very extensive, so prepare to learn all the BIOS settings - it will take time. Being a server, this motherboard (as expected) does NOT support XMP/AMP profiles, so you need to manually configure it in UEFI BIOS to use high speed memory. There are options to fine-tune the DRAM timings or select your desired memory speed from a list. The AMD processor virtualization option in the UEFI BIOS is enabled by default. One thing I'd like to add is that a lot of my bad experiences with the board stem from my misunderstanding of the controller's sideband interface. My experience of contacting Asrock Rack for support was a pleasant surprise. William from Asrock Rack was very helpful and sent me a BIOS update within a few days of reporting the problem. The only thing that needs improvement is the slow firmware release cycle, which has already been mentioned in other reviews. I am not affiliated with Asrock Rack and will gain nothing by posting my experiences. Bottom line, every issue I had with this board was due to my own misguided expectations or a misunderstanding of this board's server capabilities. The only thing I would like to do is reach out to Asrock for support sooner rather than later. Three months after purchase I can say this board is worth every dollar I paid.