Gigabyte EPYC - so far, so good

[Wondersausage]

I've got the Gigabyte MZ31-AR0 motherboard up and running with an EPYC 7351P CPU and 64GB (8x8) Crucial DDR4-2666 RDIMMs. So far I've just booted it from my Win10 test bench drive to run Prime95 (it passed). Using the Noctua NH-U9 TR4-SP3 cooler, since the board is going in my old SuperMicro 846A chassis and I don't think the plastic cooling shroud would fit -- therefore the active cooler. I measured the 4U case and the 120mm Noctua seemed about 3mm too large to fit.

The virtual KVM actually does work in HTML5 without Java, woot! Zero client-side software required for full remote management. With virtual remote media mounting! And full-screen mode!

There is also a full web GUI for a ton of system configuration stuff such as full-custom fan speed profiles, system event log, platform events with SMTP email notification, etc.

The rest of the gear arrives in a couple of days, will post follow-up. Microsemi Adaptec SmartRAID 3154-16i, Highpoint SSD7101A-1, AMD Radeon Pro WX 3100 GPU for RemoteFX.

Side note: The cables required to go from this board (SlimSAS SFF-8654) to an average backplane (SFF-8087) are only available from a single source, Cablecc.com in China. Their shipment window was about 45 days but thankfully it only took about 10 days. The board does include two SFF-8654 to (4) SATA cables.

 

[Patrick]

One tip I can give you here is to use auto memory configuration and do not play too much yourself. That aside, it works very well.

 

[Wondersausage]

Thanks, the only negative I've found is that the documentation is abysmal. Gigabyte's server product docs make Supermicro look like a consumer product. Setting up a fan profile for example was incredibly obtuse and undocumented. The default fan profile went to 100% duty cycle at 90C (!) There is zero documentation on which DIMM slots should be used in which order, so it's a good thing I went with 8 DIMMs so I didn't have to do trial-and-error. All they tell you is that if using a single DIMM it should go in A1.

Likewise, updating the BMC firmware was nerve-wracking. There is an option in the BMC itself to update its firmware but Gigabyte's download provided both a .bin and an .img with no distinction of which should be used. So I ended up using the "flash64.bat" in an elevated command prompt which thankfully worked and didn't brick the board. Now updated to BMC 1.38.

BTW just out of curiosity I checked to see if the board would POST with unbuffered RAM, and it does not.