Gigabyte added several new workstations, including a rackmount workstation, for AMD Ryzen and AMD Ryzen Threadripper (Pro.) What is interesting is that Gigabyte is adding support across a number of different verticals releasing new models in its W line.
New Gigabyte AMD Ryzen Threadripper Workstations
Let us get to the workstations and some of their motherboards.
Gigabyte W771-Z00 and MC62-G40 Motherboard
The Gigabyte W771-Z00 is a workstation built around the Gigabyte MC62-G40 motherboard. This is Gigabyte’s high-end workstation offering designed for AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO.
The MC62-G40 motherboard appears at first glance to have 7x PCIe Gen4 x16 slots, but not all are electrically x16. Instead, one is x8 in a x16 physical slot.
In the system, that x8 slot is Slot1 therefore at the bottom edge of the motherboard and would get used for a fourth double-width GPU. ATX is too small!
Still, the MC62-G40 provides consumer-friendly features such as two M.2 slots, both 1GbE and dual 10GbE (10Gbase-T) networking, and an array of USB ports. There is even a M.2 2230 slot for WiFi. One also gets an ASPEED AST2600 BMC onboard for out of band management more like a server.
We are just going to note here that this is quite a bit different compared to the Gigabyte W291-Z00 AMD EPYC GPU tower server we reviewed some time ago.
Gigabyte G182-C20 1U Workstation Server
Gigabyte has a 1U workstation server that is very interesting. This is based on the AMD Ryzen Threadripper (non-pro) and has the corresponding TRX40 chipset.
Uses for the Threadripper processor are not limited to classic workstation builds, and they have a home in a small footprint 1U GPU centric server. The G182-C20 supports all 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen Threadripper processors and is based on the TRX40 chipset.
Some of the really interesting highlights on this one:
- Redundant 1.6kW power supplies
- Two GPU slots (PCIe Gen4 x16)
- Two U.2 SSD slots
- Dual 10Gbase-T
- Even a BMC for out-of-band management
This also looked like a really interesting platform, although a part of us wishes this was a TRX80 Threadripper Pro platform so that one could use ECC RDIMMs.
Gigabyte W331-Z00 AMD Ryzen Workstation
If you want to have a more corporate-style workstation, Gigabyte has the the W331-Z00 that offers Ryzen in a tower form factor. The catch is that this is designed around a more corporate motherboard rather than a typical consumer motherboard. There are not huge LEDs and ornamental heatsinks in here.
The Gigabyte W331-Z00 is based on the AMD B550 chipset with socket AM4 so one can put up to a 16-core processor in this system but also scale down to lower-cost options. Also, unlike the higher-end offerings, this has only dual 1GbE instead of 2.5GbE or 10GbE.
Final Words
Those Threadripper (Pro) platforms look very cool. It is great to see Gigabyte push into new form factors targeting new market segments
I’m mainly impressed by how old fashioned the chassis look in front.
MC62-G40 is very nice. Finally an alternative to Asrock ROMED8-2T used in the DGX Station A100.
Just a suggestion, boards that use 7x PCI-e 4.0 x16 slots need to specify how many watts you can push through the PCIe slots. For example the A4000s and T4s both suck 70W from the PCIe slots, so 7x A4000 or T4s would load 7x70w on the PCIe bus and would probably blow the board up. So would 4x A5000s(which with TDP of 230W and only one 8pin, loads 80W on the PCIe bus which is out of spec unless the 8pin on the A5000 is also EPS kind?)
The 6pin power connector on the side of Asrock ROMED8-2T is only able to power one of the 7 slots with full GPU power, and which one isn’t even specified.
Does the W331-Z00 have proper ECC support? From all I’ve read ECC isn’t disabled on any of the ryzens; but actually having CPU, platform firmware, etc. cooperate to actually provide ECC functions, rather than merely being able to accept ECC DIMMs is something that’s a bit trickier to find and definitely cannot be relied upon from a random consumer or enthusiast motherboard.
From the W331-Z00 specs sheet:
2-Channel DDR4 memory, 4 x DIMM slots
Supported ECC Un-buffered DIMM 1Rx8/2Rx8 and non-ECC
Un-buffered DIMM 1Rx8/2Rx8/1Rx16 memory modules
Memory speed: Up to 3200/ 2933/ 2667/ 2400/ 2133 MHz
Total up to 128GB of system memory (32 GB single DIM
Woo! Thanks for posting/sharing this.
We run CFD simulations. Due to peculiarities of the software, scaling is only to about 16-20 cores (and rapidly diminishing returns above 16), and that takes 4 channels of fast DDR4 with today’s CPUs. w/ 2 channel DDR4 it’s 8 cores. Scaling across sockets is also poor, so a 1P setup is vastly preferred. Fast cores matter more than many cores. So Threadripper (non-pro) at 16 cores w/ 4 channels unregistered DDR 4 @ 3200 MHz is perfect. If the smallest SKU has 24 cores (as is rumored for Threadripper 5000) that would work too. We are licensed for up to 3 simultaneous solves so 3 of these little 1U boxes would be a nice stack.
Some notes from the G182-C20 datasheet not noted above:
1) Unbuffered ECC support
2) Oddly it claims to use the older AST2500 BMC chip – most new designs seem to be using the 2600 and this is a rev 1.00 product. Not a functional concern, it would just mean an older / slower IPMI interface.
I wish you could actually buy the MC62-G40 motherboard but it doesn’t look to be available yet that I can find? If I could find one I’d buy it and a 3955WX for my new UnRAID build.