Monday, February 11th 2019

SuperMicro Gearing for Launch of New Gaming-Grade Motherboards With PCIe Gen4 and DDR5 Wave

SuperMicro may not be household name in consumer motherboards right now, but they once were a decent alternative in the market - or so I've been told by people much more knowledgeable than me in that regard, as I never laid my hands on one. The company is now more known for its server products, where it has focused most of its attention in the past decade - an effort that gave it a good, third-place hold in that market. And if the company can command such a market share in a much more requirements-heavy environment such as the server market demands, then it's likely those design decisions and developments will find themselves trickling down to the consumer side in any sort of consumer, gaming-grade product the company decided to tackle.

To that end, SuperMicro is gearing up to re introduce themselves to the consumer market, accompanying the wave of new technologies coming to the market in a few years - namely, PCIe Gen 4 and DDR5 memory. The company seems to think that this will mark a perfect opportunity for a strong comeback to the consumer market - where they now only offer a handful of motherboard solutions for Intel's CPUs. One such example is the C9Z390-PGW motherboard, based on Intel's Z390 chipset - with its 10-phase VRM design, PLC chip for doubling of PCIe lanes, and 10 Gigabit Lan. But not only on said "typical" consumer motherboard techonologies will SuperMicro be delivering - if the company has its way, anything from 5G, IoT, Mission Learning and Artificial Intelligence can be incorporated for some use case or another on consumer-grade motherboards, thus providing an axis of penetration for SuperMicro - and its entire partner eco-system.
The company is looking to leverage its IoT and server expertise that it has been cultivating in the last few years - with gaming grade products that will go up against the likes of ASUS Maximus and Gigabyte Aorus. Senior VP Vik Malyala told KitGuru that their company is also monitoring Ryzen's performance in the market, and reflected upon SuperMicro being one of the first companies to release Epyc-supporting motherboards. Perhaps we'll see the return of green to motherboards with a sexy tinge of environmentally-friendly operations.
Sources: KitGuru, via TechSpot
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31 Comments on SuperMicro Gearing for Launch of New Gaming-Grade Motherboards With PCIe Gen4 and DDR5 Wave

#26
voltage
A very smart move to go PCIe Gen4 and DDR5. I have been, and will gladly keep waiting for both before I buy again. I think the market is and has been ready for next gen.
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#27
R0H1T
You'll have to wait a long time if you're waiting for both, DDR5 won't be coming for (retail) consumers probably till 2021 at the latest.
Posted on Reply
#28
voltage
R0H1TYou'll have to wait a long time if you're waiting for both, DDR5 won't be coming for (retail) consumers probably till 2021 at the latest.
"You'll have to wait a long time"

2 years is a long time to you? THAT is laughable. Two years goes by seemingly like a blink of an eye. I am waiting until 2021, I am aware when DDR5 is planned to be in the market, THAT is the main reason why I am waiting, 2 years is NOT a long time off.
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#29
Prima.Vera
DDR5... lol. And I'm still on DDR2 and DDR3 :)
Posted on Reply
#30
geon2k2
AssimilatorZen 2 is supposed to be launching in the middle of the year, and it's conceivable that part could support DDR5, but AMD has made it clear that the AM4 socket is supposed to be around through 2020, and historically AMD has always changed sockets for a new memory type, which strongly suggests no DDR5 support. From Intel's side it's anyone's guess as their roadmap is a mess right now with 10nm their priority above everything else, so I'd say it's unlikely that they'll offer DDR5 support this year either.
Actually, AMD had in the past CPUs with 2 memory controlers, which supported 2 sockets, so in theory they could still maintain AM4 compatibility with DDR4 support and enable AM5(AM4+) with DDR5 support on the same CPU.

See for example Athlon II:

Propus (45 nm SOI with immersion lithography)

Athlon II X4 630
Four AMD K10 cores chip harvested from Deneb with L3 cache disabled[6]
L1 cache: 64 kB + 64 kB (data + instructions) per core
L2 cache: 512 kB per core, full-speed
Memory controller: dual channel DDR2-1066 MHz (AM2+), dual channel DDR3-1333 (AM3) with unganging option
MMX, Extended 3DNow!, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, SSE4a, AMD64, Cool'n'Quiet, NX bit, AMD-V
Socket AM3, HyperTransport with 2 GHz
Die Size: 169 mm² [7]
Power consumption (TDP): 45 Watts or 95 Watts
First release
September 2009 (Stepping C2)
Clock rate: 2.2–3.1 GHz

That being said, I think it is a bit too early for DDR5, although I'd really love to see some CPU which supports it.
I think DDR4 brings too little to the table, so personally I skipped platform upgrade, however DDR5 will for sure be different due to doubling of the data rate.
Posted on Reply
#31
R0H1T
voltage"You'll have to wait a long time"

2 years is a long time to you? THAT is laughable. Two years goes by seemingly like a blink of an eye. I am waiting until 2021, I am aware when DDR5 is planned to be in the market, THAT is the main reason why I am waiting, 2 years is NOT a long time off.
What is laughable is that you think DDR5 will be mainstream(?) by 2021 &/or affordable enough even if it introduced in the retail space & yeah 2 years is quite a lot of time. Who knows in that span HBM might become cheaper & feature in mainstream APUs or even CPUs making the move to DDR5 less attractive or obvious for many.
geon2k2Actually, AMD had in the past CPUs with 2 memory controlers, which supported 2 sockets, so in theory they could still maintain AM4 compatibility with DDR4 support and enable AM5(AM4+) with DDR5 support on the same CPU.
Intel also did the same with Conroe IIRC.
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