GIGABYTE Server Launches New C2750 Mini-ITX and 2P ATX LGA2011
by Ian Cutress on May 21, 2014 3:57 AM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- Intel
- Atom
- Gigabyte
- Silvermont
- Datacenter
- 2011
- Enterprise
- server
- Avoton
Despite the C2750 coming to market officially in Q3 2013, we have not seen many products that exploit the possibilities that the new 8-core Silvermont SoC provides. We reviewed the C2750D4I earlier this year, but now GIGABYTE wants to step up to the place with a version of its own, called the GA-9SISL. The focus of this motherboard, aside from the mini-ITX form factor, will be the 32GB ECC UDIMM DDR3 support and four Intel I354 Gigabit NICs alongside AST2400 management. The networking is the focus here rather than storage, although GIGABYTE does use the six on-board SATA ports and suggests that a RAID card is used in the full length PCIe 2.0 x16 slot. The system also features active cooling with a small heatsink and a TPM header, although no USB 3.0 controllers.
Next up is the GA-7PXSL1, dual processor motherboard for Ivy Bridge-E Xeons in a standard ATX form factor. Because of the large size of the LGA2011 socket area, along with the associated DRAM slots, the sockets are aligned one above the other and at 90º compared to what the consumer range is typically used to. This is so airflow can travel over the VRMs, then the CPU heatsink and finally out of the rear of the case. It also makes for some interesting PCIe placement, with a PCIe 3.0 x4 and two PCIe 2.0 x1 ports near the bottom of the board and a PCIe 3.0 x16 (wired at x8) right at the bottom. Despite the fact that each of these CPUs should be able to handle 40 PCIe lanes, most of them are unused in this motherboard as the focus is purely on density in an ATX chassis. Some of the PCIe lanes from the chipset are diverted into four Intel 82574L Gigabit NICs, as well as an AST2300 for server management. Due to size limitations there is only one DRAM slot per channel, making eight total, but they will support ECC and non-ECC UDIMM and RDIMM modules, with 1.5V modules supported up to 1866 MHz on E5-2600 V2 processors.
GIGABYTE Server is also releasing the GA-6PXSVL, a 1P LGA2011 ATX motherboard with a total of fourteen SATA ports (8x SATA 6Gbps from Marvell 88SE9230, others from chipset) and support for x16/x16 or x16/x8/x8 PCIe 3.0 lane allocation.
I have reached out to GIGABYTE for release dates and pricing. With Computex around the corner, we should see a couple of these in action then.
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Chicken76 - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
It's good to see more server motherboards built with low power CPUs, but why, oh why, do they all use the C2750 octocore? Price is really holding this market segment from growing. A quad CPU from the same line would shave $100 off the price of this motherboard. For a lot of usage scenarios a quad would suffice. Heck, even a dualcore would do for some.freezejbc - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
@Chicken76: if you search for mini ITX server boards with dualcore (e.g. for NAS or router or firewall or whatever) - take a look at Supermicro X7SPA-HF. Pricetag around $240. I have four of these on duty since a few years without any problems.DanNeely - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
Because for the highly parallelizable workloads that many servers run the 8 core version will be almost twice as fast, and since it's a BGA part offering multiple versions is more expensive than if it was socketed.BMNify - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
speak for yourself Chicken76 ,these C2750 octocore barely make the grade as they do not have any AVX2 SIMD , a most for many workloads for a very long time now, not to mention thay currently dont have the other interesting feature for home/soho use that being http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=162442 Intel QuickSync Decoder - HW accelerated FFDShow decoder with video processing, octacore is good in 2014/15 no generic QuickSync is badbunnyfubbles - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
yeah, have to agree hereI've been dreaming of a build where I could essentially get a DIY Router, Home Server, NAS, and HTPC all in one...
A mini ITX along with the Fractal ITX case that supports up to 6 HDDs is the obvious starting point, and not many socketed ITX boards support all 6 potential Intel SATA ports, so the 6 here are awesome to see...and of course having 4x GbE ports would be amazing for the router and home server, but the CPU would definitely drop the ball for HTPC duty.
The_Assimilator - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
The 88SE9230 is a 4-port controller, so unless Gigabyte has done some magic, the 6PXSVL will come with 2 of these. And they only support RAID 0/1/10, so if you want RAID 5 you are limited to the 6 chipset ports.DanNeely - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
The area around the 8 sata ports has 2 identical Marvell chips of some type (not enough resolution to read markings); I assume these are two 88SE9230's and that there's no magic involved.ZGamer - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
There are 2x 6GB, 4x3GB SATA ports. Could do a pair of SSD's on the 6GB with some 4TB drives on the 3GB but really this lends itself more to an IDS/IPS/Firewall unless you want to toss in an HBA and at which point it looks like a decent ZFS build....but it all comes down to what the street price will be.It really depends on price-point. ASRock has the 12x SATA monster while SuperMicro has almost an identical config that carries SODIMM's and caps at 64GB ram.
Levish - Friday, May 23, 2014 - link
no onboard RAID on either of them, intel or otherwise. would have in my opinion made them both significantly more attractiveicrf - Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - link
Damn, wish that 14 SATA port board was a Z97 1150 board. I'd love one of those with a Xeon E3-1246 v3 and an M.2 port.