A motherboard is the key PCB (Printed Circuit Board) in a computer system that provides communication through which all external peripherals and components connect. Last week, Gigabyte introduced its latest MU92-series of motherboards designed for 3rd Gen Intel Ice Lake Xeon Scalable processors up to 40 cores. Moreover, it will support workstation-optimized CPUs W-3300 up to 38 cores along with high frequencies. The platforms are primarily designed for servers.
The motherboards are based on the C621A Intel chipset and possess single Socket P+ for LGA4189 processors and 16 sockets for SDRAM DDR4-3200 to enable the provision of up to 4 Terabytes of memory by using LDIMMs, Optane Persistent modules, or RDIMMs. Following are the details of the newly launched motherboards series.
Specifications
- 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors
- Supports Intel Optane persistent 200 series
- 8-Channel LRDIMM/RDIMM DDR4, 16 x DIMMs
- Xeon W-3300 Processor
- C621A Chipset
- 7 x PCIe Generation 4 x16 extension slots
- Single ultra-fast M.2 slot along with PCIe Generation 3 x4 interface
- 2 x 7-pin SATA ports
- one dedicated management port
- E-ATX form factor
Memory
- DDR4 memory support
- 16 x DIMM slots
- 8-channel memory design per processor
- 1.2V modules: 2666/2933/3200 MHz
- LRDIMM up to 128GB
- RDIMM up to 64GB
- 3DS LRDIMM/RDIMM up to 256GB
OS Compatibility
- Windows Server 2016, 2019
- SUSE Linux server 12 SP5 (x64), 15 SP2 (x64), or late
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 (x64), 8.3 (x64), or later
- VMware 6.7 Update3
- Hypervisor Citrix 8.2.0
Board Management
- Dashboard
- GIGABYTE AMI SP-X management console web interface
- AST2500 Aspeed management controller
- JAVA based LAN
- FRU information
- HTML5 KVM
- Sensor history data
- Sensor monitor (RPM, voltage, temperature, CPU Status)
- Circular Storage Policy
- Fan profile
- Hardware inventory
- System firewall
- Power control
- Power consumption
- Restore & Backup configuration
- Event log filter
- Remote CPLD/BMC/BIOS Update
- User Management
- SMTP settings
- SSL settings
- Media redirection settings
I/O capabilities
As MU92-TU is a server motherboard, it does not have rich I/O (Input/Output) capabilities. The motherboard series has two 10GbE connectors, and one GbE port for IPMI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) enabled by the Aspeed AST2500 BMC. Moreover, the unit has dual USB 3.0 ports, a D-Sub display, and a COM port.
Software Compatibility
Talking about the software compatibility, the MU92-TU is well-suited with MS Windows Server 2019/2016, Red Hat Linux 8.3 / 8.2 (x64), and later, as well as SUSE Linux 15 SP5 / 12 SP2 (x64) and later.
Operating Properties
- Operating humidity: 8 to 80%
- Non-operating humidity: 20 to 95%
- Operating temperature: 10°- 40°C
- Non-operating temperature: -40°C – 60°C
What’s in the box?
- On quick start guide
- 1 x MU92-TU0
- Quantity: ten single boxes with one carton
- One I/O shield
- One slim SAS for four SATA III 6Gb/s cable
Final Verdict
Gigabyte has listed MU92-TU1 and MU92-TU0 motherboards on the website, so we can expect that the motherboards will be available very soon. The majority of server workloads are improved for multi-threaded/multi-core systems for flexible scaling; there are some workloads that require both high core count and high clocks. Both AMD and Intel have motherboards that provide a balance between frequency and core count, and the optimized W-3300 Xeon series is a decent example of such balance. So, it makes good sense to launch a server motherboard that assists both Intel’s Xeon W and Scalable processors. If you want fast and reliable motherboard have a look to out website MemoryClearance.