AMD’s EPYC processor has made it into servers and supercomputers, yet it still has to find its place inside workstations. To a large degree that is because up until recently there were no motherboards for these CPUs on the market. ASRock Rack was first to showcase such a mainboard at Computex. Now, GIGABYTE is coming up not with one, but with two ATX mobos for AMD’s EPYC aimed at workstations.

GIGABYTE’s lineup of ATX motherboards for AMD’s EPYC consists of two motherboards, the MZ01-CE0 and MZ01-CE1. Both feature a socket for AMD’s EPYC, four PCIe x16 slots (as expected from a CPU that has 64 128 spare PCIe lanes) compatible with dual-slot graphics cards and accelerators, a PCIe x8 slot, eight DDR4 slots supporting up to 1 TB of DDR4 ECC memory, an M.2 slot for SSDs, and four SlimSAS ports for up to 16 SATA storage devices.

Despite being ATX-compatible, the two motherboards from GIGABYTE can be used to build both workstations as well as servers. The MZ01-CE0 and MZ01-CE1 platforms come equipped with Aspeed’s AST2500 BMC for remote management as well as GIGABYTE’s Server Management software.

Both MZ01-CE0 and MZ01-CE1 motherboards come equipped with two onboard Intel I210 GbE LAN controllers. Meanwhile, the MZ01-CE0 is also outfitted with two extra 10 GbE Base-T LAN ports (controlled by the Intel X550 chip) for those who have appropriate networks for transferring large files from one system to another (something quite common in movie industry, for example).

GIGABYTE has not touched upon MSRPs of its EPYC-supporting motherboards because they will be available mostly to B2B customers. Meanwhile, being unique products for server CPUs and equipped with expensive network controllers, the MZ01-CE0 and MZ01-CE1 will certainly carry premium price tags.

GIGABYTE's ATX Motherboards for AMD EPYC CPUs
  MZ01-CE0 MZ01-CE1
Supported CPUs AMD Socket 4094
AMD EPYC processors with up to 32 cores and 180 W TDP
PCH AMD
Graphics Aspeed’s AST2500 BMC
4 × PCIe 3.0 x16 slot
Display Outputs 1 × D-Sub
Memory 8 × DDR4 DIMM
Up to 1 TB of DDR4 with ECC
Slots for Add-In-Cards 4 × PCIe 3.0 x16
1 × PCIe 3.0 x8
Ethernet LAN 1: Intel I210AT GbE PHY
LAN 2: Intel I210AT GbE PHY
LAN 3: Intel X550 10 GbE PHY
LAN 4: Intel X550 10 GbE PHY
MLAN: Realtek RTL8211E
LAN 1: Intel I210AT GbE PHY
LAN 2: Intel I210AT GbE PHY
MLAN: Realtek RTL8211E
Storage M.2 1 × M.2-22110 (PCIe 3.0 x4)
SATA 16 × SATA 6 Gbps via four SlimSAS ports
Audio none
USB 2 × USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A
Serial Ports 2 × internal COM port
Other I/O 1 × TPM header (some SKUs come with pre-installed TPM)
2 × internal USB Type-A (for front panel)
Monitoring CPU Temperature
Fan RPM
Management GIGABYTE Server Management (GSM)
Aspeed AST2500 management controller
Avocent MergePoint IPMI 2.0 web interface
Compatibility

Windows Server 2012 R2 (x64)
Windows Server 2016

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.9
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11.4
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 .2

Ubuntu 16.04
Ubuntu 17.04

VMware ESXi 6.5

Form-Factor ATX (305 mm × 244 mm | 12" × 9.6")

Related Reading:

Source: GIGABYTE

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  • Hul8 - Wednesday, November 7, 2018 - link

    "Aspeed AST2500 BMC", as stated in the "Graphics" section of the spec box. It's a server management processor with 2D video output.
  • Deshi! - Thursday, November 8, 2018 - link

    Allot of server boards have very cheap graphics chips built on the board for this purpose. No 3d capabilities, it's just for hookup to monitor in server room for management. This is probably same thing considering it's just d-sub.
  • Deshi! - Thursday, November 8, 2018 - link

    Allot of server boards have very cheap graphics chips built on the board for this purpose. No 3d capabilities, it's just for hookup to monitor in server room for management. This is probably same thing considering it's just d-sub.
  • Duncan Macdonald - Wednesday, November 7, 2018 - link

    The video is driven by the Aspeed’s AST2500 BMC (as shown in the table beside the word Graphics!!!)
  • ajp_anton - Thursday, November 8, 2018 - link

    Sorry, I somehow missed it.
  • peacenik - Wednesday, November 7, 2018 - link

    I know I am not the only one tired of seeing AMD motherboards with 5 slots. How about 7x8 w/ 16s interleaved ? Why use ATX with a socket like that ??? The whole concept of that board makes no sense. It's a shame there are broken x99 plx boards still around and I have to look at AMD mobos with limited PCIe options.
  • yeeeeman - Thursday, November 8, 2018 - link

    EPYC is gaining traction, OEMs start to be interested in it and that is a good thing cause this is a very good chip for not a whole lot of money.
  • haplo602 - Thursday, November 8, 2018 - link

    Awesome, finally something to replace my ancient dual Opteron 2389 ATX system at home ... the board has about the same level of features. I would expect onboard audio however, those are dirt cheap these days.
  • hanselltc - Thursday, November 8, 2018 - link

    Hmm. 10Gbit networking, common in the movie industries and Linus' backyard.
  • quorm - Thursday, November 8, 2018 - link

    Are any of the major oems offering epyc workstations yet? As of a couple months ago neither HP nor Dell seemed to have anything.

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