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Gigabyte launches quartet of Intel C230 chipset motherboards

by Mark Tyson on 20 October 2015, 12:07

Tags: Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), Gigabyte (TPE:2376)

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Gigabyte has launched four new motherboards aimed at the server and workstation markets. The motherboards are all based upon the Intel C230 series chipset, providing support for the latest Intel Xeon E3-1200 V5 family of processors, formerly known as 'Greenlow'. Two of the motherboards are aimed at workstations, the Gigabyte MW31-SP0 and MW21-SE0. Another two are aimed at servers, the Gigabyte MX11-PC0 and MX31-BS0.

The range of motherboards that Gigabyte has launched include ATX, micro-ATX and mini-ITX form factors, and a premium and budget model for both server and workstation deployments. They all feature support for the aforementioned processor family, based upon the Skylake microarchitecture, and DDR4 memory technology. Gigabyte boasts that the quartet of boards are built with high quality "server grade components".

Workstation Motherboards

Gigabyte's MW31-SP0 is an ATX motherboard aimed at professional tower workstations. Users have upgradeability thanks to 4 x DDR4 DIMM slots, an M.2 slot, 8 x SATA 3 ports and support for dual graphics cards. The MW21-SE0 is an entry level workstation motherboard in the micro-ATX form factor. You still get 4 x DDR4 DIMM slots but less SATA and PCIe connectors and no M.2 slot.

Server Motherboards

The Gigabyte MX11-PC0 is a Mini-ITX form factor server motherboard with rackmount optimized component placement. It features 2 x DDR4 DIMM slots and 2 x GbE LAN ports. An NVMe technology port is provided for faster data transfer performance. Gigabyte's MX31-BS0 is a microATX form factor entry-level server board, again rackmount optimised. Thanks to its larger area it supports 4 x DDR4 DIMM slots, 2 x GbE LAN ports and more SATA III ports than the MX11-PCO. However it doesn't provide an NVMe port, instead it features an M.2 slot.

Workstation

Server

MW31-SP0

   4 x DDR4 DIMM slots supporting up to 64GB of ECC memory

   2 x GbE LAN ports (Intel® I210 + I219LM controllers)

   Rear I/O add-on card slot

   2-way NVIDIA® SLI™ & AMD® CrossFireX™ support

   1 x M.2 slot

   8 x SATA III 6Gb/s ports

MX11-PC0

   2 x DDR4 DIMM slots supporting up to 32GB of ECC memory

   2 x GbE LAN ports (Intel® I210 controller)

   1 x NVMe port

   4 x SATA III 6Gb/s ports

   1 x PCIe x16 (Gen3 x16 bus) connector

   Aspeed AST2400 remote management controller

 

MW21-SE0

   4 x DDR4 DIMM slots supporting up to 64GB of ECC memory

   1 x GbE LAN port (Intel® I219LM controller)

   6 x SATA III 6Gb/s ports

   1 x PCIe x16 (Gen3 x16 bus) connector

   4 x USB 3.0 ports

   2 USB 3.0 + 2 x USB 2.0 ports via headers

MX31-BS0

   4 x DDR4 DIMM slots supporting up to 64GB of ECC memory

   2 x GbE LAN ports (Intel® I210 controller)

   1 x M.2 slot

   6 x SATA III 6Gb/s ports

   1 x PCIe x16 (Gen3 x16 bus) connector

   Aspeed AST2400 remote management controller

 



HEXUS Forums :: 14 Comments

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Could it be? Could there finally be more than one motherboard option for me with Skylake E3 Xeons? And I'm not just limited to ATX? Hallelujah!

I'm so used to there only being exactly one motherboard available for E3 Xeons and that's usually from ASUS and available in ATX only.

Not that these boards look particularly exciting… Only the ATX board utilizes the C236 chipset. Ah well, at least that makes it two boards to choose from, as ASUS will inevitably have one too.
ECC unregistered or buffered?
A mini-ITX server motherboard … sounds interesting. Oh wait, only 2xDIMM slots so only limited use for virtualisation projects. Such as shame.
rainman
A mini-ITX server motherboard … only 2xDIMM slots ….

Exactly how many did you expect them to fit onto a 170mm x 170mm board? What do you want them to remove, the VRMs? The PCIe slot and SATA ports? Has there *ever* been a mini-itx board with more than 2 DIMM slots? I suspect it might be possible to cram 4 SODIMMs on a mini-itx board, but even that would be tight….
scaryjim
rainman
A mini-ITX server motherboard … only 2xDIMM slots ….

Exactly how many did you expect them to fit onto a 170mm x 170mm board? What do you want them to remove, the VRMs? The PCIe slot and SATA ports? Has there *ever* been a mini-itx board with more than 2 DIMM slots? I suspect it might be possible to cram 4 SODIMMs on a mini-itx board, but even that would be tight….

Yeah, ditch the VRMs. WHO NEEDS 'EM :P