ASRock develops Intel W790 “Deep Micro-ATX” motherboard, which supports up to 56 cores
Rack compatible motherboard from ASRock can host both Xeon W2400 and W3400 series.
A motherboard model with an easy to remember name “W790D8UD-1L1N2T/BCM” is the newest addition to ASRock Rack platform for workstations. This motherboard is based on the Intel W790 chipset, and it supports Intel Xeon W-2400 and W-3400 CPU series known as Sapphire Rapids.
The motherboard itself supports up to 8 DIMMs of DDR5- memory (up to 4400 MT/s in 2 DIMM per channel and 4800 MT/s in 1 DIMM per channel modes). It can support up to 64GB of RDIMM, 128GB or 256GB of RDIMM-3DS memory. This is by no means a consumer motherboard, yet nothing should prevent one from buying it.
W790D8UD-1L1N2T/BCM motherboard, Source: ASRock
Some readers may find it surprising that the motherboard features two OCuLink ports, which were recently added to some handheld gaming consoles as an alternative to the slow Thunderbolt connector for external GPUs. The thing is, this port was around for some time, and it was primarily used on server motherboards, not the other way around. Its goal is to offer a PCI Express-based standard competitive to Thunderbolt. This PCI-SIG developed standard is available on this board in through two connectors, which can either be used for storage or PCIe expansion cards.
W790D8UD-1L1N2T/BCM motherboard, Source: ASRock
This W790 motherboard is designed to meet the Deep Micro-ATX form factor (10.4×10.5 inch/264×266 mm). This is actually the first Intel W790 motherboard in such a size, and yet it features as many as four full-sized PCIe 5.0 slots.
ASRock did not reveal pricing or availability date for this motherboard. The specifications still have a preliminary status.
Source: ASRock via @momomo_us