Gigabyte MW70-3S0 (Intel C612) Dual CPU Workstation Motherboard Review

Bohs Hansen / 9 years ago

Final Thoughts & Pricing

Pricing

The availability is still a bit sparse at the time of writing, but that should change very soon as the board is being rolled out to the different markets. The MSRP for the UK is set to £430 and the US price is set to $585.

Overview

The Gigabyte MW70-3S0 is a motherboard that doesn’t run out of stamina in any way and let us first talk a bit about its features first. With support for two Xeon E5 V3 processors, each with up to 18 cores and 45MB Cache, as well as 16 memory banks that each support up to 64GB DDR4 memory at 2133 MHz, the basics are set. We can further expand the power of the system by adding up to 3-way SLI and CrossFireX graphics and get a workstation that won’t run out of power anytime soon.

All that power has to go somewhere and the MW70-3S0 connects to the world via two Intel controlled Gigabit Ethernet ports. While that is sufficient for a normal connection to backup servers and the world, it isn’t enough to work directly from. When working with large CAD files, photos, or videos, then network storage is a slow solution. Thankfully we don’t need to rely on that with this board either, as it brings plenty of internal storage abilities right out of the box. The Intel C612 chipset provides us with the first 10 SATA3 port where two of them support DOM. On top of that, the MW70-3S0 also comes with an onboard LSI3008 controller for eight SAS 12Gbit drives. With 8TB drives, that aren’t uncommon anymore, that could equal to 144TB raw capacity right inside the workstation.

Gigabyte also packed this motherboard with onboard sound and an onboard GPU for those who don’t need a lot and don’t want to spend extra money on more add-in cards. The 7.1 channel audio provided by the Realtek ALC888 provides basic sound options and the onboard Aspeed AST2400 solution provides basic 2D video out up to 1080p.

We really can’t fault this motherboard in any way when it comes to its performance, it scored itself to the top of most charts without breaking into a sweat. These are some impressive results, especially when considering the features and the relative low price for what we get.

Pros:

Dual CPU and 16 DDR4 slots
10 SATA 6Gbps and 8 SAS 12Gbps ports
Dual Intel i210 Gigabit Ethernet
Great performance
Good price

Cons:

2 CPUs increase power consumption significantly
Top PCIe slot very close to bottom memory slot

“Gigabyte’s MW70-3S0 would be the perfect base for a powerful workstation. The performance and features convince right from the start and it’s further helped by a very fair price.”