The GIGABYTE MZ72-HB0 (Rev 3.0) Motherboard Review: Dual Socket 3rd Gen EPYC

GIGABYTE MZ72-HB0 Conclusion

When it comes to dual-socket motherboards for servers, the vast majority have larger PCBs designed for server casing sizes such as EEB, rather than desktop sizes like ATX. We find it great to see some vendors kicking the trend of this slightly is the GIGABYTE MZ72-HB0 with dual SP3 sockets on an E-ATX sized frame. Not only does this make the GIGABYTE slightly unconventional, but it gives it added flexibility for a variety of uses, including regular PC cases that include support for this size.

Compared to some of the larger models from other brands, the MZ72-HB0 does make some sacrifices to be able to fit everything onto an E-ATX PCB, including one module per channel in memory, and fewer PCIe slots with not all the PCIe capacity supported. GIGABYTE has used as much of the board as possible, which includes eight memory slots per socket, so sixteen slots in total with support for up to 4 TB of DDR4-3200. For storage, GIGABYTE includes flexibility for users between conventional SATA drives and NVMe based drives, with four 7-pin SATA ports, one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, two NVMe SlimSAS 4i connectors, and allows users to install either twelve SATA devices or three PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe drives via three SlimSAS ports. 

GIGABYTE MZ72-HB0 (Rev 3.0) with 2 x AMD EPYC 7763 and 512 GB DDR4-3200 installed

With functionality being the focus here, GIGABYTE includes a variety of features to allow for server and workstation deployment, with dual 10 Gb Base-T Ethernet powered by a Broadcom BCM57416 controller, with a dedicated management LAN port and D-sub video output offering BMC access via an ASPEED BMC controller. Backing this up is GIGABYTE's latest MegaRAC SP-X interface which includes both HTML5 and Java functionality. It provides a range of functional elements including access to sensors in real-time over a network, performs power-related tasks such as reboots and shutdowns, or even firmware backup and update, which can be useful if it's installed into a data center environment. 

Performance on a configuration such as this is somewhat insane, using two EPYC 64-core processors built around Zen 3. We saw the good generation-on-generation performance in our EPYC Milan Review, but in our system testing here, the GIGABYTE did as well as expected in our POST time testing which took just over two and a half minutes to boot into Windows from a cold boot. In terms of power, two 280 W processors are going to pull a lot of wattage from the wall at full load, and our DPC latency testing shows the GIGABYTE isn't suitable for audio production; that's not a surprise.

Being a dual-socket board, the one large consideration to make about such a design is the form-factor deployments. Being an E-ATX board, the principal use-case for most of our audience at least would be as a workstation, or at least some server deployment in a more usual PC enclosure. What’s important to consider here is the cooling requirements - it being a more server-oriented design, it lacks the usual consumer-grade larger heatsinks, and thus requires a lot more airflow, which can become an issue when you have two 280W CPUs along with a ton of DRAM, not to mention additional PCIe devices such as a GPU. Careful planning for adequate cooling is paramount to achieve the best performance. 

Final Thoughts

There are a few dual-socket EPYC 7003 motherboards available today at retailers, including brands such as Supermicro, ASRock Rack, and GIGABYTE. A lot of EPYC 7003 options are available in customizable barebones too, which are inherently more expensive and can vary widely in price depending on the desire configuration. The GIGABYTE MZ72-HB0 Rev 3.0 for EPYC 7003 has an MSRP of $1060, but GIGABYTE themselves informed us that they expect retailers to sell for around the $1000 mark. Looking at the functionality and the targeted market, the price isn't a bad one, and considering that each of the AMD EYPC 7763 processors retails for $7890, the cost of the motherboard is relatively cheap by comparison.