Gigabyte MJ11-EC1 EPYC 3151 Mystery

[BMacD]

Came across this board on eBay looking for a Xeon or Epyc Mini-ITX board:

eBay UK





Wondering if anyone has any information on this board - my Google-fu has failed. It looks very similar to the MJ11-EC0 but with the PCIe connector replaced by a (to me) mystery one. Price seems a lot better than a Xeon-D equivalent (there is a second listing without memory for EUR 151).

Maybe an OEM board fitted to a NAS??

 

[piranha32]

The connector looks a bit like occulink x8. Good if you want to use NVME drives, not so good if you want to use an HBA. At best you will need an occulink to pcie adapter board (if bios supports it).

 

[nexox]

The specs on the auction mention a SlimSAS connector, and the PCB silkscreen says U2 for that port, which is how Gigabyte labels NVMe connectors, so I'm guessing it's an x8 SlimSAS wired only for PCI-e, to which you could connect two U.2 drives if you get the right cable. The specs fail to mention the SATA ports though, and there's another shielded connector next to them, also not mentioned, could be something that would connect a single NMVe drive or 4 SATA drives.

 

[BMacD]

Thanks for the replies! I took a look at the manual for the EC0 and the connector next to the 4x SATA is a "SlimSAS" wired for 4xSATA or PCIe, the extra connector replacing the PCIe slot does indeed look like an Oculink. So a good fit for a 1Gbe NAS with no SAS, but unfortunately I want to build minimum 10Gbe and currently use SAS drives!

 

[mstoebich]

I'm pretty sure its from one of these boxes:
Gigabyte G431-MM0

Must've been some sort of mining rig or similar. These popped up a few weeks ago, i was initially tempted but i don't see a realistic use case tbh.

 

[BMacD]

I'm pretty sure its from one of these boxes:
Gigabyte G431-MM0

Must've been some sort of mining rig or similar. These popped up a few weeks ago, i was initially tempted but i don't see a realistic use case tbh.

Agreed - mystery solved, thanks!

 

[SadoKitten]

Their for HPC use. G431-MM0 (rev. 100) | GPU Servers - GIGABYTE Global . Sorry for late reply, we have one at work.

 

[mstoebich]

Their for HPC use. G431-MM0 (rev. 100) | GPU Servers - GIGABYTE Global . Sorry for late reply, we have one at work.

Interesting, I'm wondering what type of workload would actually benefit from 10x PCIe3x1 slots - I mean in the end data has to go through a PCIe x8 Interface...

Must've been some sort of mining rig or similar. These popped up a few weeks ago, i was initially tempted but i don't see a realistic use case tbh.

Well... I had those boards on my watchlist for two weeks now and finally gave in and ordered 3 for 100€ a pop. lets see what these are capable of. If anyone is interested i can post my findings. Also if anyone has specific questions, feel free to ask!

 

[BMacD]

Hi @mstoebich , I would appreciate it if you could let me know whether the connector which replaces the PCIe slot is an Oculink x8 connector and whether it can be configured for x8 rather than 8 x1 - then it could be good for a cheap low power SATA NAS using that connector with an adapter cable for a network card!

 

[SadoKitten]

10 x PCIe x16 slots Gen3 for GPU cards. We have ours as a esxi host. For blue Iris and other vm's

 

[SadoKitten]

The BMC can be updated on these from version 12.60.09 to 12.61.01 . The file you need to update it with is called server_firmware_ast2500_AMI_12.x.zip ,and it is 103 MB . Inside the zip file you will find the tools needed and the bmc firmware.

 

[jnrnbt.]

Hey folks, just got one of this boards today from ebay, bought it with the ATX Adapter from that same ebay shop.
I´m trying to get this thing to work as an replacement for a broken Xeon D-1520 Server.

For my first test, BMC Update worked as intended like SadoKitten said.
RAID, like Gigabyte stated on the G431-MM0 site, is not available, so i will try to get an Oculink to PCIe Adapter to work for using my LSI RAID Card.

What concerns me a bit is that i can only see 32 gb (the first two mem slots) of my 4x16 GB DDR4-Reg ECC setup, will try to investigate further tomorrow.

 

[SadoKitten]

Do you happen to know the name of that atx adapter?

 

[nexox]

i will try to get an Oculink to PCIe Adapter to work for using my LSI RAID Card.

Now that you've got a board in your hands it might be a good time to take some measurements or post some close up photos to ensure that port is Oculink, or at least make sure you buy parts with a good return policy.

 

[SadoKitten]

The port uses this SlimSAS X8 (SFF-8654) 74P. Which can connect to this SlimSAS 8i (SFF-8654) to PCIe x8 Slot Adapter

 

[BMacD]

Would something like this SlimSAS 8i (SFF-8654) to PCIe x8 Slot Adapter work to convert the port to PCIe x8? Could then use for any PCIe - RAID or Network?

 

[SadoKitten]

Yea I'm pretty sure it will work . That's the same link I posted earlier

 

[BMacD]

Yea I'm pretty sure it will work . That's the same link I posted earlier

Your post initially came up without the link - only the name of the cable. If I had waited a little it would have saved me the Googling!

 

[jnrnbt.]

The power adapter is lowkey technically, but as i dont know how i could buy one of those 4p plugs i ordered the adapter with the board.
The shop has a howto for the adapter, https://files.ram-koenig.de/information/649/power-guide_de.pdf

The sl-sas should be Slim SAS (SFF-8654).
Now i´m a bit confused what the u2_2 is. I even didn´t know about the sheer existence of Oculink since last week as i found this thread. In the bios there are some PCIe based options specifically for the u.2 port.
As the board definitely comes from a G431 box (as seen in bios and bmc) there has to be an adapter to pcie, but i don´t even know that much about u.2 and need to nerd into this
Edit: That u.2 port is indeed a "SFF-8654 8i".

if its possible to fit a RAID card with enough performance thats as of my actual knowledge by far the cheapest Epyc 3000 system usable for a full-blown Server.

 

[SadoKitten]

The full server from gigabyte has an expansion board with 10x 16x pcie 8 ports , but gigabyte uses one cable.