Gigabyte MZ72-HB0 rev. 4.0

[alex_stief]

Recently got a workstation in with this motherboard: Gigabyte MZ72-HB0 rev. 4.0. Yes, 4.0, it is printed right on the board.
The bios seems to be old, outright missing a lot of options, and I am having trouble getting the graphics card to play nice.
So my first order of business would be updating the bios... looking at Gigabyte page for this board, the latest revision they list is 3.0: MZ72-HB0 (rev. 3.0) | Server Motherboard - GIGABYTE Germany
Anyone has an idea whether I can use the latest 3.0 bios for my rev. 4.0 board?

I hear you say "dude, just contact their support". I won't hear back from them until Tuesday, and was hoping to get things moving along quicker.

 

[RolloZ170]

actual BIOS of rev. 3.0 is M08_R12
which BIOS is on your rev. 4.0 currently ?

 

[alex_stief]

It says "Project version: M03" in the bios information section. With a build date of 04/14/2021.

Just one example for options that are apparently missing: under "advanced" -> "legacy video select" I just get an empty screen instead of the option to prioritize between onboard and external video.

 

[RolloZ170]

sounds like a confidential board for software (BIOS) engineering.
you should ask the seller, or return it and get a rev. 3.0.

 

[alex_stief]

Well now that you mention it, that could be a possibility.
I contacted both the SI and Gigabyte to see what they have to say about it.

 

[NablaSquaredG]

At Gigabyte, different Revs sometimes only mean that they're shipped with a different BIOS version from factory but are physically identical or nearly identical

 

[alex_stief]

I'll update here when I get a response from support. But for now, there is not much I can do.
There are Milan CPUs on the board, which seem to work fine. Epyc 7543.

Here is what the bios section looks like

 

[RolloZ170]

BMC FW(12.53.01) is older too, latest for 3.0 is 12.58.03

I'll update here when I get a response from support.

on the MD71 i could update the BIOS over BMC Web GUI, would be interesting if this works on MZ72 too, there is a RBU folder in the update package for that.

 

[mirrormax]

I have a rev1 board and asked gigabyte about this before. I suspect rev number is just about the bios it's shipped with.

Question: please clarify1) Can i use the milan bios update for rev3 on my MZ72-HB0 (rev. 1.x) board?2) Is it a dual rome/milan bios or milan only?Thanks 6/21/2021 3:04 AM
Answer:
Dear mirrormax,

It is because of the classification that rev. 1.x and rev. 3.0 BIOS are separated. It is work that flash BIOS M02_R09 from revision 3.0 website for your revision 1.x server motherboard. M02_R09 is a dual support ROME and Milan BIOS.

Regards,
GIGABYTE

 

[alex_stief]

No news about the motherboard so far.
Does anyone know if they have a technical phone support? I found one, but they only deal with consumer products. Asked for a different phone number there, but only got pointed towards their ticket system again. One might think that support for enterprise gear should be better or at least on par with consumer stuff

About the graphics card issue that prompted me to make a bios update in the first place, that was a rather easy fix. Default OpenSUSE Leap 15.3 still doesn't support AMDs RX 6600 series. Loading the backport kernel did the trick.

 

[alex_stief]

Kind of an update on the revision situation...
While my support tickets with Gigabyte are still not processed, let alone answered, I got an answer from somewhere else.
An acquaintance who works at a larger institution got Gigabytes "Sr. Key Account Manager NCBU DACH" to answer an email.

Paraphrased into English it reads:
Revision changes are a common occurrence due to regular adjustments in BIOS. This particular change does not have noteworthy differences. Older BIOS revision boards are in scarce supply.
Followed by a long list of supported operating systems for whatever reason

That still doesn't answer why a rev. 4.0 board would come shipped with such an old BIOS version, since they claim the revision change is due to newer BIOS versions.
But at this point I'm like "whatever dude". I love the product, but hate everything else about Gigabyte.
Not to mention that the workstation itself is a 17000€ train wreck, but that's a story for another time.

 

[RolloZ170]

That still doesn't answer why a rev. 4.0 board would come shipped with such an old BIOS version

GB bought 1.000.000 preprogrammed flash BIOS chips... (just guessing)

 

[oneplane]

Confidential and Development assemblies often have different PCB colouring and a bunch of debug headers, connectors and testing circuits installed. If your board has all of its JTAG headers soldered on, it might be for testing, but looking at the silkscreen and solder resist colours, it looks like a normal production board.

It's likely that their whole SKU process is a mess, but if you want to be sure:

1. Read the Flash chip externally as a backup
2. Install an update
3. If it breaks something, write the flash chip back from your backup file

Technically, updates should contain a list of flash chip IDs so the capsule updater will not flash incompatible firmware on your board, but this has been flaky with most vendors.

 

[alex_stief]

Aaaand here is the end of the story:
Gigabyte updated their website to include revision 4.0
And after 6 weeks, their support actually answered my ticket, confirming that 3.x and 4.x are identical for all intents and purposes. And they kindly informed me that my second ticket, which I opened 5 days later, was redundant and would only congest their busy pipeline, thus increasing overall service time.
By that time, I had already updated to the latest bios.

 

[Spartus]

Update for some future sad soul in my situation.

I was able to update my MZ72-HB0 Rev 1 bios to Rev 3, and boot my Rev 1.1 board with Milan-X

I failed so many flashing attempts, even ones from the right bios series, before I tried TFTP and that worked.

 

[alex_stief]

Could you explain how TFTP comes into play here for a simple guy like me?

 

[Spartus]

You can either update via "web upload" where you browse for the file on your local computer then click upload. Easiest and you would think it should work...

Or you can setup a TFTP server, which is like passwordless ftp for file transfer. Then tell the BMC what the server address and update file name is, and click update.

Easiest way to host TFTP I find is mobaxterm

 

[mirrormax]

Did you try just old school USB stick with bios file and command line update? Don't think i was able to update bios earlier from ipmi, but with new BMC firmware i think i was able to do the r10 bios update in ipmi.

On that topic anyone noticed much slower boots in one of the newer bioses? Either r9 or fr10 gave me 5min of black screen and no action until it boots and no error messages that i can see.

 

[Spartus]

Mirrormax that was going to be the next attempt, uefi update, but the only CPUs I had to do it with were in production use actively working, and water cooled. The headache of taking it apart etc...

I have a bunch of other's that wouldnt work

a single -04 Rome QS that wont boot unless you have 2 for a dual socket board

a bunch of ZS17, which wont boot on new bios.

etc.

 

[Trotador]

So, could then my MZ72-HB0 Rev 1.0 board work with Milan/Milan-X?

thanks!