ASRock Rack 1U2E-C252 Intel Xeon E-2300 1U Server Review

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ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Internal Socket And Memory Airflow View
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Internal Socket And Memory Airflow View

The ASRock Rack 1U2E-C252 is a relatively compact 1U server for the Intel Xeon E-2300 series. While the Xeon E-2300 series has been out for some time (here is the ASRock Rack Intel Xeon E-2300 Series Launch piece), the series is still the current-generation platform for the lower-cost 1P server market. In this review, we are going to see what makes the ASRock Rack 1U2E-C252 different.

ASRock Rack 1U2E-C252 Hardware Overview

As has been our custom in recent reviews, we are going to split our hardware overview section into external and internal hardware overviews. That way we can go into what makes this platform unique since ASRock Rack is known for putting a unique spin on its servers.

ASRock Rack 1U2E-C252 External Hardware Overview

The system itself is a 1U server, albeit not a very deep one. Officially it is 393.2mm or 15.5” deep. That keeps the unit very compact and also makes it wider than it is deep for some sense of scale.

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Front
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Front

On the left side there is an optical bay that is unused in our system.

The front of the unit has two USB 3.0 ports along with status LEDs and the power/ reset buttons.

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Front Buttons LED And USB
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Front Buttons LED And USB

On the right front, there are two 2.5″ bays. These can support NVMe or SATA drives and result in a huge influence on the rest of the sever. In the market for which this server is designed, common storage configurations are a single SSD, mirrored SSDs, or a boot drive and 1-2 storage drives. While some users may want other configurations, this is actually designed for specific markets.

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Front 2.5in Bays
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Front 2.5in Bays

We are going to show a little bit inside the server just to keep the external and internal hardware overviews more balanced. So looking behind the 2.5″ bays, we can see that they have both SATA and PCIe connectivity via a small hot-swap backplane. Another nod to the 2.5″ bays being designed for NVMe is that there is a cooling fan for the drives. Usually, if these drive bays were SATA only, most servers would simply use the PSU fan to cool drives. With higher-power NVMe devices, that extra cooling is a small design feature that helps a lot.

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Internal 2.5in Area
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Internal 2.5in Area

Moving to the rear of the system, we see the PSU on the left, then the rear I/O in the middle, and the PCIe riser on the right. There is actually a bit more going on here than that, so let us get to it.

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Rear
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Rear

The PSU in this system is a non-redundant unit. That means it is fixed and not hot swappable as well. If you wanted to feed A+B power into this server, you would need something like an ATS.

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Rear PSU
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Rear PSU

The unit itself is a 315W 80Plus Gold rated. These servers are usually designed to operate well below 200W so this PSU is ample.

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Internal PSU
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Internal PSU

In the rear of the server, we have standard VGA and serial ports. There are four USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports which is more ample than many servers we see. In addition, there is an out-of-band management port for the IPMI and two Intel i210-at 1GbE ports. There are two more port cutouts that are not being used in our system, as we will see on the motherboard, there is room in the motherboard design for 10GbE options, but that is not what this server is set up for.

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Rear IO
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Rear IO

Also, there is a HDMI port. That is very uncommon in servers, but as we mentioned earlier, ASRock Rack takes a unique spin on its servers.

There is a place for a full-height expansion slot, but in practice, things are different once we get inside.

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Rear Expansion Slot
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Rear Expansion Slot

With that, let us get to the internal hardware overview.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Hi Patrick,
    Thank You for another intriguing review for STH fans. …You are spot on with your recommendation to give up antiquated CD-ROM slot, and go with 4×2.5″ drives. Maybe add a pair of 10gbe SFP or RJ45 ports too for that vacant 2 X RJ45 area while they are at it;).
    Best Regards,
    ABQ 🙂

  2. Interesting product.

    Spotting those Mini-SAS connectors on the riser is useful info. I wonder if ASRock designed and built that riser for some other product, and then they realized when they built this product they already had a riser card design.

    The ASRock web site has the chassis dimensions:
    393.2 x 430 x 43.5 mm (15.5” x 16.93” x 1.71”)

    So, not the shortest depth chassis out there, but shorter than most which makes this product useful in certain installations.

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