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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phoenix_rizzen - Saturday, March 28, 2020 - link
Stupid lack of edit button.FreeBSD on the ZFS storage servers. Linux in the iSCSI servers.
kobblestown - Saturday, March 28, 2020 - link
"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)."Errrgh, no. Supermicro has had HTML KVM since quite a while. I think all AST2400 BMCs offer it. I was quite surprised that I got it even for my old AST2400 BMC with an update. And it works as one would expect.
Deicidium369 - Sunday, April 12, 2020 - link
Yeah the GB stuff is nice, but really just playing catchup to SM.oRAirwolf - Saturday, March 28, 2020 - link
Why does nobody use the dual 10Gbe controller built into the EPYC chips? Each Zen die has 4 x 10 Gbe MAC's on board, yet the only motherboard I have ever seen to utilize them is AMD Wallaby platform development board here https://www.servethehome.com/amd-epyc-3251-benchma...My only guess is that motherboard manufacturers are worried about compatibility issues. I sure would rather save the money, energy, and heat resources and use the embedded AMD 10Gbe than another manufacturer's chipset shoehorned into the motherboard for no good reason.
mode_13h - Monday, March 30, 2020 - link
...and VGA FTMFW!!mode_13h - Monday, March 30, 2020 - link
yes, I know, KVMs...I even have a VGA KVM, myself. Although, I mostly use it as just a keyboard+mouse switch.
It's just ironic to see a board with so much modern tech, and yet it's rare to even see a VGA port on new monitors.
Qasar - Tuesday, March 31, 2020 - link
its rare ??? you sure ?? seems most of the monitors that AT mentions, have vga ports on them.... even the new one from here : https://www.anandtech.com/show/15674/tuf-goes-free... has onetravelstar - Monday, March 30, 2020 - link
I'm curious as to why we have a review of an older motherboard restricted to PCIe Gen3 slots, when the newer Z323-AR0 comes with PCIe Gen4 slots.Pyxar - Wednesday, December 23, 2020 - link
I keep running into workstation boards that are capped at 64gb of ram based on epyc or thread ripper when i'm search engine diving. Seems wrong to cap it at 64.tomholms - Tuesday, September 7, 2021 - link
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