Friday, May 10th 2024
ASRock Intros W790 WS R2.0 Motherboard
ASRock today introduced the W790 WS R2.0 motherboard for workstations powered by 4th Gen Intel Xeon W-3400 and W-2400 series processors in the Socket LGA4677 package. Although its model name suggests that it is a revision of the W790 WS, the new W790 WS R2.0 appears to be a lite version of the original, which removes several I/O features. To begin with, the fancy I/O shroud makes way for bare connectors, where you can see several of the connectors stripped away. While the CPU VRM appears unchanged, the VRM heatsinks used on the R2.0 are of a simpler design. The design effort behind both these changes appears to be to make the board friendly to certain kinds of rackmount chassis.
Besides the design changes, the ASRock W790 WS R2.0 loses out on Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 6E, and only has a single 10 GbE interface instead of dual-10 GbE on the original W790 WS. These aside, the W790 WS R2.0 is still a very capable workstation motherboard for the platform it's based on. It draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, two 8-pin EPS, and a 6-pin PCIe power; and uses a 22-phase CPU VRM. The board features four PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slots (x16/NC/x16/NC or x16/NC/x8/x8 or x8/x8/x8/x8), and one PCI-Express 4.0 x16 (electrical x4). The CPU socket is wired to eight memory slots, supporting quad-channel DDR5 memory, with support for DDR5 RDIMM-3DS, a total memory capacity of 2 TB, and a maximum overclocked memory speed of DDR5-6800.
Storage connectivity on the ASRock W790 WS R2.0 includes four M.2 Gen 5 slots, each with PCI-Express 5.0 x4 wiring, one U.2 port with PCI-Express 4.0 x4 wiring, and eight SATA 6 Gbps ports. USB connectivity includes a 20 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 type-C, two 10 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-A, seven 5 Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 1, and three USB 2.0. Networking interfaces include a 10 GbE interface driven by an Aquantia AQC113CS controller, and a 2.5 GbE driven by an Intel I226LM that supports vPro. 6-channel HD audio makes for the rest of it. The company didn't reveal pricing, although we expect this board to be priced significantly lower than the original W790 WS.
Besides the design changes, the ASRock W790 WS R2.0 loses out on Thunderbolt 4, Wi-Fi 6E, and only has a single 10 GbE interface instead of dual-10 GbE on the original W790 WS. These aside, the W790 WS R2.0 is still a very capable workstation motherboard for the platform it's based on. It draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, two 8-pin EPS, and a 6-pin PCIe power; and uses a 22-phase CPU VRM. The board features four PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slots (x16/NC/x16/NC or x16/NC/x8/x8 or x8/x8/x8/x8), and one PCI-Express 4.0 x16 (electrical x4). The CPU socket is wired to eight memory slots, supporting quad-channel DDR5 memory, with support for DDR5 RDIMM-3DS, a total memory capacity of 2 TB, and a maximum overclocked memory speed of DDR5-6800.
11 Comments on ASRock Intros W790 WS R2.0 Motherboard
edgeup.asus.com/2023/asus-pro-ws-w790-series-workstation-motherboards-and-intel-xeon-w-3400-cpus-make-a-potent-combination/
It's mad to release something like this given the fact that TRX50 is available at better price point, quantity, power envelope and performance by far. Only few 2400 Xeons are in the wild and available for 'average Joe'. Even if it's Intel platform its comical it has no TB4 capacity while TRX50 from AsRock has.
The Core i7-3930k and Core i7-5820K are still decent processors IMO but unfortunately they aren't officially supported in Windows 11 due to Microsoft skulduggery……
- Get rid of all the M.2 slots. Yes, I'm serious. These tie up a total of 16 precious PCIe lanes, and using these with high performance SSDs will have challenges with cooling. Much better to provide an extra PCIe 16x slot instead, which would allow users to use enterprise M.2 SSDs of 22110 or U.2 SSDs with adapters. These M.2 slots are mostly gimmicks like they've done it.
- The U.2 slot (tied to the PCH) is questionable, it has very limited use when hooked up like this.
- Get rid of the 10G Aquantia NIC. (those who need 10G will go for the much better Intel X550 or X710)
- Use a more basic VRM heatsink with longer fins; will improve cooling thanks to airflow and probably no be more expensive.Intel's move to ditch the LGA20xx series in favor of slightly increasing the IO on the mainstream platforms, and raising the entry to "HEDT", basically merging the workstations platforms, has left a huge gap.
I've said it for years this was a big mistake, as many "prosumers" and professionals have use for both good IO and fast cores rather than extreme core count. The good old X79/X99/X299 were wonderful platforms (except for split with i7s/Xeons). What they basically should have done for the next iteration is to ditch the absurd PL1/PL2 thing on mainstream, move the >100W CPUs to a tier between the mainstream and the 8-channel high-end workstations, having a ~2500pin LGA 250W TDP, 4-channel memory, ~64 PCIe lanes etc., and standard CPU cooler compatibility. Then motherboard geared towards enthusiasts and workstation users respectively. Doing so would allow for motherboards starting at ~$600, where is where "WS" motherboards from Asus and Supermicro for LGA1700 is priced anyways.