The Intel W480 Motherboard Overview: LGA1200 For Xeon W-1200
by Gavin Bonshor on June 24, 2020 9:00 AM ESTGIGABYTE W480 Vision W
Moving down GIGABYTE's W480 product stack is the W480 Vision W, which is similar in feature set to the W480 Vision D bar some of the most premium features. Included in the W480 Vision W feature set is a pair of PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, eight SATA ports, with two Ethernet ports including a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet controller pairing and a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec.
Although the GIGABYTE W480 Vision W isn't as visually appealing as the more premium Vision D, the W still looks good with a very busy PCB full of components and circuitry around the PCIe slot area. Included are four full-length PCIe 3.0 slots, with two of them featuring a metal slot reinforcement coating. The two metal-coated slots operate at PCIe 3.0 x16 and PCIe 3.0 x8, while the remaining two are locked down to PCIe 3.0 x4, although the second of these x4 slots share bandwidth with second PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot. There is a total of eight SATA ports, with six from the chipset that includes support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays, while an ASMedia SATA controller drives the other two ports in orange.
On the rear panel, the W480 Vision W includes a single USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, three USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and four USB 2.0 ports. Included is a pair of RJ45 ports, one controlled by an Intel 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller, and the other by an Intel Gigabit controller, although GIGABYTE hasn't specified the actual controllers used. Powering the five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output is a Realtek ALC1220-VB HD audio codec, while a pair of video outputs including a DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI 1.4 allow users to use integrated graphics on supported processors. Finishing off the rear panel is a PS/2 keyboard and mouse combo port.
The GIGABYTE W480 Vision W is a solid offering with support for both ECC and non-ECC memory, a 2.5 GbE Ethernet controller, and a premium ALC1220-VB audio codec. At present GIGABYTE hasn't unveiled pricing for any of its W480 models, but we expect the W480 Vision W to come in cheaper than the higher-grade W480 Vision D.
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timecop1818 - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
nobody cares about pcie4, and definitely not the target audience for this cpu/boards.PixyMisa - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
Intel doesn't offer PCIe 4.0 on any of their CPUs yet. Not even Cooper Lake, which launched last week.Foeketijn - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
Even if they would be PCIe 2.0 they would sell. Current xeon servers are still also sold with iron drives.The box will say, Intel and Xeon, Windows server will run on it, and the barebone is less then 600 bucks. All potential customer needs.
Foeketijn - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
Because the whole server is going to cost way less then 1 Epyc CPU.dragosmp - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
DFII fondly remember a Lanparty Nforce4 AM2 board
Most their good folks went to Biostar, I seem to remember, and then to Gigabyte. Glad to see they're still around as a company, although they may not have anything to do with the DFI of old
Foeketijn - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
Ah, a man of culture! Those where the hardware times. The times when the chipset mattered, and the latest CPU could do things you couldn't do with last years CPU. When the midrange GPU was affordable and still beat last years high end GPU.Having said that. On the CPU front AMD is making life interesting a bit lately.
bolkhov - Wednesday, June 24, 2020 - link
Gavin,Regarding Supermicro X12SAE: it is NOT the only ATX W480 model from Supermicro; the second one is X12SCA-F. Its main difference is BMC (hence the "-F"), thus, the IPMI/BMC mentioned in X12SAE docs are about X12SCA-F.
In X11 lineup these mobos' predecessors were X11SAE/X11SAE-F (Skylake/Kaby) and X11SCA/X11SCA-F (Coffee). For some unknown reason in the X12 lineup this pair was separated, and current Supermicro's site is, to put it mildly, not very informative/straightforward/useful (previous version had much better information accessibility), so it isn't easy to grasp the whole W480 lineup.
Foeketijn - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
This chipset is for people who need a server. Which CPU? Intel I guess.I am wondering why so many motherboard are made. Maybe because they are a drop in replacement for the consumer chipset. So R&D cost are minimal.
In the end 99% of those chipsets are sold by HP/Dell/Lenovo in less then 1000 bucks windows server boxes.
If only those 3 would make the same Ryzen based servers like Asrockrack. Then still the bulk would be intel, since in this branch, hardware minded people are scarce (you did your 3 year IT course, and now you can maintain a Windows Server, as long everything goes as planned).
bolkhov - Thursday, June 25, 2020 - link
BTW, regarding ASUS Pro WS W480-Ace:according to User Manual, two Display Port connectors on the rear panel are NOT outputs, but are INPUTS, for those TB3s. Probably to connect discrete GPU outputs, for those to be tunneled to TB3s.
Dunno if iGPU output pipes are routed to TB3s internally or if HDMI is the only iGPU output; the User Manual keeps silence about it.
Mr Perfect - Saturday, June 27, 2020 - link
That ASRock W480 Creator has the most impressive rear IO I've ever seen. Why don't high end desktop boards have a set like that?