Gigabyte's new Atom server board (MA10-ST0)

[m0nkey_]

So Gigabyte has a new board coming out, known as the MA10-ST0. It's a monster!

Here's a quick run down of the hardware specs:

• Intel® Atom™ C3958 SoC
• 32GB eMMC flash memory (USB drives are so 2016)
  
• Dual Channel RDIMM/ECC UDIMM DDR4, 4 x DIMMs (up to 512GB RAM!)
  
• 2 x 10Gb/s SFP+ and 2 x 1Gb/s LAN ports
• 4 x Mini-SAS up to 16 x SATA 6Gb/s ports

Full details here: http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Server-Motherboard/MA10-ST0-rev-11

The good news is, according to this article, the board does work with FreeNAS 11. There is however currently no support for the 10Gb/s SFP+ ports but I imagine that will be addressed in the not too distant future.

This board will make for a few interesting builds (and not just for FreeNAS, maybe a high end firewall?), I can't help but think this board will be very expensive.

 

[silverback]

I been thinking about going to a low power atom build with 6 big drives. Looks like this would fit the bill nicely. I guess supermicro will have similar offerings eventually, haven't actually found them in stock anywhere. Thanks for this.

 

[Stux]

Early results from STH: https://www.servethehome.com/testin...0-with-pfsense-2-4-release-and-freenas-11-u4/

tldr; still need driver support

 

[Dice]

At some point it will likely be ready.
At that point, oh my gosh. *drool*

 

[Ericloewe]

FreeBSD 11.1 should have driver support, so it'd be nice of them to quickly try it out.

 

[danb35]

4 x Mini-SAS up to 16 x SATA 6Gb/s ports

The product page doesn't seem quite clear whether these are true SAS ports, or just four SATA ports bundled into one SAS connector. Looks like a nice board, though.

 

[m0nkey_]

The product page doesn't seem quite clear whether these are true SAS ports, or just four SATA ports bundled into one SAS connector. Looks like a nice board, though.

They appear to be only SATA ports.

 

[danb35]

They appear to be only SATA ports.

That's what I suspected from the block diagram. Bummer. Means those of us with expander backplanes will still need a SAS HBA.

 

[Dice]

They appear to be only SATA ports.

that's such a pity :(

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm curious how fast this board is going to be. 16 Cores sounds nice but they would need to be used in the proper way or it's just a waste. @m0nkey_ thanks for posting this.

 

[Waco]

Those cores are pretty junky from an IPC / clock speed standpoint. Don't expect anything lightly-threaded to run well.

 

[Constantin]

This may very well be my next board when the current one dies thanks to the LGA errata affecting the Asrock in my Mini XL. The combination of onboard SFP+ and support for 16 drives in a low TDP package is pretty amazing.

The A2SDi-H-TP4F from SuperMicro also falls into this category. Likely more expensive due to the 2x10GBE ports and 2 SFP+ cages. Perhaps this board will be supported sooner than the Gigabyte one? Installing FreeNAS on the M2 port seems more common than the on-board flash solution found on the Gigabyte board.

Asrock has something slightly bigger in the works, the C3758D4U-2TP2OP8R. Larger than the mini ITX boards above, it offers two PCI expansion ports and a LSI3008 SAS controller. It appears to be a atom version of a D1541-based board they already sell. They also have mini ITX boards.

All of these boards look extremely interesting but online availability of any 3000-series Atom board appears to be pretty sparse. The D1541 versions are out there around the $1k price point. Depending on the version, the 3000-series may offer better performance at 2/3 the TDP.