In 2021, Samsung announced the industry’s first High-K Metal Gate (HKMG)-based DDR5 memory, which doubled the speed of DDR4 while reducing power usage by 13%, with Samsung’s DDR5 stacking eight layers of 16Gb DRAM chips to deliver a massive 512GB capacity.
Fast forward to 2024, at Computex, ServingTheHome I came across the Gigabyte R283-ZK0 motherboard, pictured above. Integrating the maximum number of DIMM slots into servers, specifically those using modern configurations with 12 DDR5 channels per CPU socket and two DIMMs per channel (making a total of 24 DIMMs per socket), presents significant challenges in terms of ensuring the DIMMs work properly together and managing the physical space required to fit all of these components within the server chassis. This is a problem that the Gigabyte R283-ZK0 motherboard ably solves.
This powerful motherboard is not just another server board, it features 48 cleverly arranged DDR5 memory slots, allowing for up to 24TB of RAM when equipped with Samsung's 512GB DDR5 modules.
Twisted Slots
From the outside, the R283-ZK0 looks like a typical 2U server with its 12 hot-swap 2.5-inch NVMe/SATA/SAS drive bays and a large wall of fans, but the magic is revealed once the lid is removed. Inside, the server reveals a single CPU slot located at the back, just ahead of some PCIe risers. But the real wonder is above the system, where the motherboard is spread out with an impressive array of 24 DDR5 RDIMM slots per CPU, adding up to a total of 48 slots in a dual 2nd Gen AMD EPYC 9004 series configuration.
As ServingTheHomeCliff Robinson says: “In order to accommodate so many DIMMs, the CPUs can't be lined up next to each other. Instead, there are staggered sets of 6-2-4-4-2-2-4 DIMM slots. The slots are angled on the motherboard to allow some overlap of the slots and sockets.” It's certainly an impressive piece of engineering.
Other features of the Gigabyte R283-ZK0 include two 10Gb/s LAN ports (Intel X710-AT2), one PCIe Gen5 x16 FHFL (full-height, full-length) slot, and one OCP 3.0 Gen5 x16 mezzanine LAN slot for use with network cards.
