Reviews

Broadberry CyberServe XE5-102S v3 review

Broadberry’s pizza-box server shows that good things do come in small packages

by: Dave Mitchell

1 Jul 2015

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Price

£1,949

Innovative chassis design; Remarkable hardware/size ratio; Low cost 10GbE upgrades; Good value

Small storage capacity

Don't be deceived by the miniscule dimensions of Broadberry's new rack server as it packs a heck of a specification. The CyberServe XE5-102S v3 may only be 383mm deep but it has room for dual E5-2600 v3 Xeon CPUs, up to 1TB of DDR4 memory and a lot more besides.

The system is an all-Asus affair comprising its new R9D short-depth 1U rack chassis and Z10PR-D16 motherboard. Designed for businesses that want more from their rack cabinet, it's shallow enough to allow two servers to fit in 1U of space.

Air flow may be an issue but Broadberry has this covered as the server supports back-to-back and front-to-back installations. Asus has two models with the standard RS400-E8-PS2 version having the hard disks at the front and all I/O ports at the back while the F' model has these reversed so you can decide on the air flow direction through the rack cabinet.

And if you change your mind, you can swap them round whenever you want. It isn't a simple process as you need to reverse the cooling fans and move the drive cage and power supply but Broadberry provides a handy step-by-step guide.