The GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0 Motherboard Review: EPYC with Dual 10G
by Gavin Bonshor on March 25, 2020 1:15 PM ESTBoard Features
The GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0 has an impressive array of features which stretches across the entirety of the board. Rev 1.x is designed for AMD's EPYC 7001 (Naples) family of processors, whereas Rev 2.x can use AMD's EPYC 7002 Rome CPUs.
This motherboard doesn't use a chipset as such, it relies on the processor installed into the board. Some of the boards premium features include support for up to sixteen SATA drives, with four SlimSAS ports each enabling use for four SATA devices per cable. A solitary PCIe 3.0 M.2 slot is located next to the SlimSAS, although users looking to install more PCIe 3.0 NVMe could opt for a PCIe slot to M.2 adapter. Dominating the majority of the lower half of the board is seven PCIe 3.0 slots which operate at x8/x16/x16/x16/x8/x16. Opting for a larger E-ATX form factor has allowed GIGABYTE to include sixteen memory slots with support for DDR4-2666 LRDIMM and RDIMM up to a maximum capacity of 2 TB.
GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0 E-ATX Motherboard | |||
Warranty Period | 3 Years | ||
Product Page | Link | ||
Price | $565 | ||
Size | EATX | ||
CPU Interface | LGA 4094/SP3 | ||
Chipset | SoC | ||
Memory Slots (DDR4) | Sixteen DDR4 Supporting 2TB ECC LRDIMM/RDIMM Octa Channel Up to DDR4-2666 |
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Video Outputs | 1 x D-Sub (Aspeed) | ||
Network Connectivity | Broadcom BCM 57810S Dual SFP+ 10 G 1 x GbE (Aspeed) |
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Onboard Audio | N/A | ||
PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) | 7 x PCIe 3.0 x16 x8/x16/x8/x16/x16/x8/x16) |
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PCIe Slots for Other (from PCH) | N/A | ||
Onboard SATA | Sixteen (4 x SlimSAS) | ||
Onboard M.2 | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA | ||
Onboard U.2 | N/A | ||
USB 3.1 (10 Gbps) | N/A | ||
USB 3.0 (5 Gbps) | 2 x Type-A Rear Panel 1 x Header (two ports) |
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USB 2.0 | 2 x Type-A Rear Panel 1 x Header (two ports) |
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Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin ATX 2 x 8pin CPU |
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Fan Headers | 2 x CPU (4-pin) 5 x System (4-pin) |
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IO Panel | 2 x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A 2 x USB 2.0 Type-A 2 x SFP+ 10 G (Broadcom) 1 x D-Sub (BMC) 1 x Serial Port 1 x MLAN (Aspeed) 1 x ID Button |
Some of GIGABYTEs controller choices are interesting with a dual SPF+ 10 G ports on the rear powered by a Broadcom BCM 57810S Ethernet controller. A total of four USB Type-A ports are located on the rear of the board consisting of two USB 3.1 G1 and two USB 2.0 ports, while a USB 3.1 G1 and USB 2.0 front panel header offers an extra two ports per header. Also on the rear panel is a serial port, a D-sub video output provided by the Aspeed AST2500 BMC, which also includes a single Gigabit Ethernet port for remote access. As the GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0 isn't designed for the consumer market, the board has no on-board audio codec. It does, however, have a total of seven 4-pin fan headers with two dedicated for a CPU cooler, and five for chassis fans.
Test Bed
As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch, and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.
For direct comparisons with consumer boards, we're using a 16-core processor.
Test Setup | |||
Processor | AMD EPYC 7351P 180W, $774 16 Cores, 32 Threads, 2.4 GHz (2.9 GHz Turbo) |
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Motherboard | GIGABYTE MZ31-AR0 | ||
Cooling | Noctua U14S TR4-SP3 | ||
Power Supply | Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200W Gold PSU | ||
Memory | 8x32 GB SK Hynix DDR4-2933 21-21-21 Ran at DDR4-2666 |
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Video Card | MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming X 8G (1683/1822 Boost) | ||
Hard Drive | Crucial MX300 1TB | ||
Case | Open Test Bed | ||
Operating System | Windows 10 64-bit 1909 |
Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.
Many thanks to...
We must thank the following companies for kindly providing hardware for our multiple test beds. Some of this hardware is not in this test bed specifically, but is used in other testing.
37 Comments
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xyvyx2 - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
physically the same, but not compatible :(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socket_sTRX4
Operandi - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
Looks like the perfect board for my home Pfsense build. In all seriousness though looks like a pretty baller single socket Epyc board if only I had something lined up that could use it.Deicidium369 - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link
a door stop would be an appropriate use for it - unlikely AMD would have the drivers ironed out.MenhirMike - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
Does anyone know if it's possible to use Unbuffered ECC RAM with EPYC? Thinking of upgrading from a Threadripper to an EPYC for a Server, but I don't want to rebuy RAM as I already got enough DDR4 ECC UDIMMs.Slash3 - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
Some Tyan boards seemingly support it from their spec sheets, but it's something that most reviews don't cover, unfortunately.Patrick at Serve the Home has also mentioned support on some older boards, but unfortunately he didn't mention any specific models in the one comment I was able to dig up on their forums.
MenhirMike - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
Also, curious if the board supports bifurcation - the lack of M.2 Slots would make it perfect for e.g., an ASUS HYPER M.2 X16 or Supermicro AOC-SLG3-2M2 card, but for that it needs to support bifurcation of an x16 into 4x4 or an x8 into 2x4 slots.Slash3 - Wednesday, March 25, 2020 - link
The Hyper M.2 is long enough that you wouldn't be able to insert the card into the first five slots, which is a bit of a bummer. I can't confirm bifurcation support but I'd be very surprised if it didn't have it.phoenix_rizzen - Thursday, March 26, 2020 - link
We built our first iSCSI storage box around this motherboard. Have nothing but great experiences with it, and the IPMI implementation is light-years beyond what Supermicro supports (the GB IPMI is fully-web-enabled, using HTML5 KVM/console redirection, compared to the horrid Java implementation that Supermicro uses).The only downside if the SlimSAS connectors. It's very easy to find SlimSAS-to-SATA connectors (even comes with some in the box). Pain in the ass to find SlimSAS-to-SFF8084 connectors to connect to multi-lane, direct-attach backplanes! They exist, but nobody actually carries them (at least nobody that we could find in North America). Had to get them from a cable maker in China, which took the very slow boat to arrive.
For our first build, I messed up the model number for the backplane, ending up with an SAS expander version, so we had to use an HBA anyway.
For our second iSCSI storage server, we switched to the MZ01-CE0 motherboard. This includes 10GBase-T ports instead of SFP+. Other than that, it's virtually the same board. Got the right model backplane, and the SlimSAS-to-SFF8084 cables, giving 16 SATA connections direct off the motherboard.
For our next ZFS storage server, we'll be using MZ01-CE0 in a 2U chassis, running the OS off the motherboard connectors, with LSI/Broadcom/whoever-they-are-now HBAs with external connectors going to multiple 45-bay storage chasssis. That setup works great with all the extra PCIe lanes. :)
fazalmajid - Friday, March 27, 2020 - link
What OS do you use for your ZFS/iSCSI servers?phoenix_rizzen - Saturday, March 28, 2020 - link
FreeBSD