News ASRock Unveils the X299E-ITX/ac: Mini ITX + X299 + Quad-channel Memory

Mod edit:

Detailed overview of what we know about the X299E-ITX/ac thus far here: https://smallformfactor.net/news/asrock-x299e-itxac-little-monster-detailed

Original:

ASRock did it! Finally, there's an Intel HEDT platform motherboard with full quad-channel DDR4 memory. The new X299E-ITX/ac is for those who need up to 18 CPU cores and up to 64 GB of quad-channel DDR4 memory in their SFF machines for reasons. The board manages its limited PCB real-estate by going vertical. It features two riser cards, one with a few onboard controllers, and a pair of 32 Gb/s M.2 slots), and the other riser with SATA 6 Gb/s ports, a third M.2 slot, and the headers such as USB 3.1. The board draws power from 24-pin ATX and 8-pin EPS connectors, conditioning it for the LGA2066 CPU using a 7-phase VRM. The lone expansion slot is a PCI-Express 3.0 x16, memory is handled by four DDR4 SO-DIMM slots. Connectivity includes two Intel I219-V driven gigabit Ethernet interfaces, 802.11ac WLAN, and Bluetooth 4.1.

Source

 

[Boil]

Would be sweet if one could have the two "VTEC Powah" cores available for gaming, AND have the remaining cores chugging along on streaming / audio / browser / etc. duties...

 

[wywywywy]

Desktop Broadwell could probably give it a run for its money.

The desktop Broadwell went into a lot of pre-built boxes from the big manufacturers as far as I know.

 

[EdZ]

The desktop Broadwell went into a lot of pre-built boxes from the big manufacturers as far as I know.

The BGA Broadwell variants (both desktop and mobile) were reasonably well distributed, but the two desktop LGA1150 chips (i5-5675C and i7-5775C) with Crystalwell were pretty hard to find. I don't even recall that any of the larger prebuilders (Dell, HP, etc) had SKUs with them, and the only one I can find now are a Eurocom laptop that could have been ordered with the 5775C.

 

[jeshikat]

People are complaining about the 28 PCIe lanes, but it's also $400 cheaper, so I think that's a fair tradeoff.

I think it'd be a fair tradeoff if it had always been that way, but it's a 100% price increase compared to last gen for the PCIe lanes so that just screams price gouging.

It also makes sense because I think $600 is the upper limit of overkill-consumer hardware shopping, i.e. something a regular consumer/hardware enthusiast would get because it's awesome, not because they necessarily need it. And those people (myself included) don't need more than 28 lanes.

The overlap between people willing to spend $600 on a CPU and those wanting SLI is probably much higher than any other segment of the market, yet now unless you spend $1000 if you have just two NVIDIA cards and a PCIe SSD you're out of PCIe 3.0 lanes.

Interesting - can you tell us what type of cooling solution you used in that build? I would hope that with something like a good AIO cooler, those chips would at least come close to their max turbo speeds. I love the idea of a 14 core chip, but 2.5 isn't great. Your experiences are making the 8 core chip look more appealing.

I have a E5-2683 v3 that I bought for cheap on eBay since it's used, and it looked pretty rough when I bought it. So it not hitting max turbo is likely an issue with this particular chip and not the HCC Intel CPUs in general.

But I was just using it as an example of high core counts but low clocks not really being ideal for non-server workloads where single-threaded applications are still very common.

 

[CircleTect]

Would be sweet if one could have the two "VTEC Powah" cores available for gaming, AND have the remaining cores chugging along on streaming / audio / browser / etc. duties...

Pretty neat idea! I wonder if it's technically possible. One super high clock core for single thread apps and the rest at a much lower clock speed for lower thermals / power. Would solve the perennial issue of having to choose between more cores versus clock speed. I'd buy a processor like that.

 

[EdZ]

yet now unless you spend $1000 if you have just two NVIDIA cards and a PCIe SSD you're out of PCIe 3.0 lanes.

With 28 lanes, and x8/x8 for SLI (no practical performance impact) you still have 12 lanes for at least 3 NVME drives.
I don't think anyone is going to be hurting for PCIe lanes unless you're doing some bandwidth-limited compute task (and are unable to wrangle a P100/V100 rig with NVLink).

 

[jeshikat]

Oh duh, I forgot about just bifurcating the top x16 slot.

 

[Phryq]

Well, there's also the rear IO, standoffs, case sheet thickness, cooling, GPU, and so forth that take up space.

Right, if you can find a 6mm heatsink to cool a 165W CPU with

Right; it wouldn't be practical, but

I want to have external power brick, no GPU, and for cooling, I'm not sure, but maybe cover the entire case with graphene/flat-heatpipes/2d-vapor-chamber and fins to make it a passive cooling case (which would be more than 1.5 L with the fins, but still very small).

Or just stick a giant BeQuiet air-cooler on it; it could still make a 4-5L cube, and I think fit into a backpack (my personal goal).

 

[jeshikat]

Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X do not have integrated GPUs, so you would have to have a video card unless you plan to run it headless or maybe use one of those industrial display adapters converted from Mini-PCIe to M.2 (assuming it'd clear the CPU heatsink).

 

[QuantumBraced]

Fair points on SLI guys, I hadn't thought about that much. But really, is there any difference in performance between x16 and x8? I think even a 1080 Ti needs well under x8 bandwidth, a 1080 barely saturates x4 as we've seen with Thunderbolt 3 enclosures. I think SLI is dying and I hope it'll go extinct. It's why I got into SFF in the first place, it seemed like ITX was no compromise, so I thought why go bigger...

Good point on the ASRock board saturating 28 lanes if all M.2 are used. It's good they included a front side M.2 too, so it can be adapted into a x4 slot or anything else if needed. This board has more M.2 than most brand new ATX boards. And I challenge them to do 4 M.2 slots next time with 2 on the front and 2 on the back.

 

[jeshikat]

But really, is there any difference in performance between x16 and x8?

For gaming, no.

And I challenge them to do 4 M.2 slots next time with 2 on the front and 2 on the back.

If Intel wakes up and smells the coffee AMD's brewing and gives us more lanes on the lower-end HEDT that'd be a nice use of them. I think a vertical M.2 along the edge of the board would be neat to use with all those adapters.

 

[EdZ]

Fair points on SLI guys, I hadn't thought about that much. But really, is there any difference in performance between x16 and x8?

Can't find any tests for thee 1080ti specifically, but for the Titan X (Maxwell) and 980ti there is little if any difference in most cases. Exceptions are if you are pushing a lot of pixel bandwidth (i.e. insane multiple-tiled-UHD resolutions or UHD at very high refresh rates).

::EDIT:: Looks like Skylake-X ditched the Ring Bus and switches to a Xeon Phi-like mesh fabric.

 

[BirdofPrey]

Would be sweet if one could have the two "VTEC Powah" cores available for gaming, AND have the remaining cores chugging along on streaming / audio / browser / etc. duties...

I keep hoping Intel or AMD (though it seem more likely from the latter) make an x86 equivalent to ARM's big.LITTLE architecture that pairs powerful cores with full capability for handling primary tasks with lighter cores for handling background tasks.

 

[IntoxicatedPuma]

I think Intel has kind of done that with the Turbo Boost 3 - because one or two of the cores can ramp up much higher. I think from a desktop perspective big.LITTLE doesn't make a whole lot of sense though because power constraints arent a big problem.

After thinking about Threadripper and X299, I still feel AMD has a big challenge ahead of them. They aren't a clear winner in the HEDT space with Threadripper and the rumored prices yet, especially for those concerned about SFF. The 7820X CPU is looking really good for the price and performance, should beat anything AMD has at single core and give the 10-12 core Threadrippers a run for their money due to higher clock speed and superior IPC. Also, while Threadripper may have more PCI lanes, I really don't see many people using over 40 or even 28. There is no reason to use more than two GPU's so that's limited to 32 lanes, and unless you're loading up with PCIe SSD's and 10gbit PCI cards (and who really needs that?) - why make PCI lanes a deciding factor in the purchase?

I think if Intel had never come up with the Kaby Lake X, this whole scandal with X299 wouldn't exist. If you remove it from the equation, the confusion is gone and it's a very compelling platform. Hope AMD can keep up the pressure on Intel though!

 

[QuantumBraced]

For gaming, no.

If Intel wakes up and smells the coffee AMD's brewing and gives us more lanes on the lower-end HEDT that'd be a nice use of them. I think a vertical M.2 along the edge of the board would be neat to use with all those adapters.

Agreed, we haven't seen too many vertical M.2. It wouldn't look too weird on a board full of risers.

 

[MarcParis]

Well X299 platform, even without kabylake-X is really confusing :

• No Thunderbolt
• No Optane
• No soldered IHS (whereas it was the case on X99)
  
• No raid (at least free of charge, with others SSD than intel ones)
• 28 pcie lanes on 6-10 cores whereas you had 40 lines on X99 platform

If you look for high IPC, it's better to choose Kabylake on Z270 platform
If you look for higher multi threading and jack of all trades, Ryzen 5/7 are far better deal
If you are looking for cost effective highly multi threading, threadripper is the best deal

No definitely, i don't see a lot of avantages going on Intel X299...coffee lake will have better arguments to fight vs Ryzen.

 

[IntoxicatedPuma]

Ryzen 5/7 makes sense against current 115x line, but if Intel releases a 6 core running at 4-4.5ghz boost @ under 400 USD, Ryzen is losing alot of appeal, because it won't come close at single threaded and might only barely hold it's lead on multithreaded apps. Intel still has a significant IPC advantage and is also getting 10-15 percent higher clocks.

Against HEDT I still think Thread ripper has a lot of work to do, no m-ATX or ItX, and also no Thunderbolt 3 or portable either....

X299 might be confusing, but confusing doesn't mean AMD has the lead just because.

 

[EdZ]

I keep hoping Intel or AMD (though it seem more likely from the latter) make an x86 equivalent to ARM's big.LITTLE architecture that pairs powerful cores with full capability for handling primary tasks with lighter cores for handling background tasks.

If Xeon Phi gain success, then we could see future chips combining some 'big' x86 cores along with a cluster of smaller more basic x86 cores. If Larrabee (predecessor to Xeon Phi, with some focus on graphics output) is resurrected then this x86 cluster could replace the GPU that takes up a large portion of the die on current Intel consumer CPUs. The advantage of a cluster of x86 cores over a GPU is that unlike with HSA and GPGPU you are using the same ISA for both the 'big' and 'small' cores, so there is the potentail to shuffle workloads in between.

Well X299 platform, even without kabylake-X is really confusing :

• No Thunderbolt

A shame, but expected from all their other chipsets. Thunderbolt is an expensive part, stretching the PCIe PHY layer is no mean feat.

• No Optane

Optane Memory has been confirmed as a feature, Optane m.2 cache drives have not been confirmed either way yet AFAIK.

• No raid (at least free of charge, with others SSD than intel ones)

RAID0 for NVME m.2 drives is present, as are all other RAID levels for SATA drives. The 'Intel SSD only' is for bootable RAID0 NVME only.

If you look for high IPC, it's better to choose Kabylake on Z270 platform
If you look for higher multi threading and jack of all trades, Ryzen 5/7 are far better deal
If you are looking for cost effective highly multi threading, threadripper is the best deal

And if you have mostly single-threaded workloads and sometimes some moderately parallel workloads, it X299 makes perfect sense.

 

[jeshikat]

The 'Intel SSD only' is for bootable RAID0 NVME only.

I believe the Intel drive restriction still applies to the other RAID levels too.

And if you have mostly single-threaded workloads and sometimes some moderately parallel workloads, it X299 makes perfect sense.

That's me. Most CAD programs are single-threaded, Photoshop/Premiere Pro is only multi-threaded to a point, but 3D rendering will eat up entire server farms if you've got the coin.

 

[MarcParis]

Ryzen 5/7 makes sense against current 115x line, but if Intel releases a 6 core running at 4-4.5ghz boost @ under 400 USD, Ryzen is losing alot of appeal, because it won't come close at single threaded and might only barely hold it's lead on multithreaded apps. Intel still has a significant IPC advantage and is also getting 10-15 percent higher clocks.

Against HEDT I still think Thread ripper has a lot of work to do, no m-ATX or ItX, and also no Thunderbolt 3 or portable either....

X299 might be confusing, but confusing doesn't mean AMD has the lead just because.

Well...R5 1600 cost with B350 MB : 300$, skylake -X 6 cores + X299 MB : 700-800$ at best...Intel X299 is definitely interested only to have best performance without considering performance/cost ratio.

RAID0 for NVME m.2 drives is present, as are all other RAID levels for SATA drives. The 'Intel SSD only' is for bootable RAID0 NVME only.

Hopefully RAID is still valid for sata.... but new restriction on bootable nvme raid ssd is TOO much.