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

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 View of the internal base and storage airflow

ASRock Rack 1U2E-C252 is a relatively compact 1U server for the Intel Xeon E-2300 series. Although the Xeon E-2300 series has been around for a while (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 will see what makes the ASRock Rack 1U2E-C252 different.

ASRock Rack 1U2E-C252 hardware overview

As has been the norm in recent tests, we will split our hardware overview section into external and internal hardware overviews. This allows us to delve deeper into what makes this platform unique, as ASRock Rack is known for bringing a unique touch to its servers.

ASRock Rack 1U2E-C252 External Hardware Overview

The system itself is a 1U server, although not very deep. Officially, it's 393.2mm or 15.5 inches deep. This keeps the unit very compact and also makes it wider than deep for some degree of scale.

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

There is an optical bay on the left that is unused in our system.

Two USB 3.0 ports are located on the front of the device 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

There are two 2.5″ bays on the right front. These can support NVMe or SATA drives and have a big impact on the rest of the server. In the market this server is designed for, 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 2.5 inch front bays
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 2.5 inch front bays

We're going to show a little bit of the inside of the server just to keep the external and internal hardware overview more balanced. So if we look behind the 2.5" bays, we can see that they have both SATA and PCIe connectivity over a small hot-swap backplane. Another nod to the 2.5-inch bays designed for NVMe is that there is a fan for the drives. If those drive bays were just SATA, most servers would typically just use the power supply fan to cool drives. On more powerful NVMe devices, this extra cooling is a small design feature that helps a lot.

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Internal 2.5 inch section
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Internal 2.5 inch section

Moving to the back 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's actually a bit more going on here, so let's get to that.

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

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

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 rear power supply
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 rear power supply

The device itself is rated at 315W 80Plus Gold. These servers are typically rated to run well below 200W, so this power supply will suffice.

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Internal Power Supply
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 Internal Power Supply

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

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

There is also an HDMI port. This is very unusual in servers, but as mentioned earlier, ASRock Rack takes a unique twist on its servers.

There's room for a full-height expansion slot, but in practice things look different once we're inside.

ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 rear expansion slot
ASRock Rack 1U2E C252 rear expansion slot

This brings us to the internal hardware overview.