This morning, we take a look at ASRock’s server branch which announces its Z690D4U-2L2T motherboard. A new reference equipped with an Intel Z690 chipset while embedding a total of four network interfaces.
Z690D4U-2L2T: four network interfaces!
With this model, we find a motherboard in micro-ATX format with an Intel Z690 chipset and a LGA-1700 socket. As you may have guessed, the board is designed to host 12th generation Intel Core i CPUs.
Besides that, the card has three PCIe slots. The first will be an x1 connector in the 3.0 standard, the second an x16 in 4.0 and the last an x8 in 4.0. However, it will be possible to increase the number of PCIe interfaces thanks to three OCuLink in PCIe 4.0 x4 connected either to the chipset or the CPU.
The storage part offers a total of four SATA III connectors as well as an M.2 in PCIe 3.0 x4. The SATA can be extended thanks to an OCuLink (again) giving access to four additional ports.
As far as RAM is concerned, there are four DDR5 slots. Unfortunately, there is no support for ECC memory. Finally, the card can take up to 32 GB of RAM at 4400 MHz.
Finally, it is on the back that we find interesting things and in particular, the presence of four network interfaces. Two of them are driven by Intel X710 in 10 GbE and two others via Intel i210 in 1 GbE. A fifth Ethernet port is present for the management of IPMI functions via a Realtek RTL8211F chip. With this, we have the right to a serial port, VGA (ASPEED AST2600), HDMI and DisplayPort and two USB 3.2 Gen1.
Here is the ASRock Rack datasheet!