Recently, Patrick did a dive into the licensing model of some common virtualization environments. For that article, he used an inexpensive server platform he bought from Newegg. He ended up with a bundle containing both the AMD EPYC 4464P CPU and a Gigabyte 1U chassis for $899, which was quite a bargain. In fact, as of the time of writing, that Gigabyte chassis is the least expensive EPYC 4000 compatible rackmount platform available on Newegg by a fairly wide margin. That chassis was the Gigabyte R113-C10, and though he briefly touched on the server in his article, it was not fully covered as a review. Today I look to remedy that, as well as to continue the new series of EPYC 4000 system reviews that was started with the ThinkSystem ST45 V3. While the Gigabyte R113-C10 is not a complete system like the ST45 V3, it also looks to have some features that the ST45 V3 missed out on, so I am excited to see it in action.
For those who watch STH YouTube, this was the server we used in this video:
Gigabyte R113-C10-AA02 External Overview
To get started, the Gigabyte R113-C10-AA02 is a fairly short-depth 1U chassis at 393mm deep.
The front of the system has two USB 3.0 ports, power and reset buttons, indicator LEDs.
Perhaps the most important feature is the pair of hot-swap 2.5″ SATA drive bays.
Finding SATA SSDs today is not hard, but it is also not the easiest task. We are using Micron 5300 Pro 3.84TB SSDs because that is what we had four of in the studio.
These drive bays are not wired for anything other than SATA, so no NVMe drive options here.
On the rear of the system, we have a basic 1U server layout.
On the left rear, we have the power input to the 400W power supply.
In the center, we have sparse rear I/O. This is common for lower-cost 1U servers and something that stands in contrast to the Lenovo ST45 V3 that Patrick looked at. There are two legacy serial and VGA ports.
We also get an out-of-band management port, two USB ports, then two 1GbE ports via Intel i210-at NICs.
If you are using an AM5 CPU with integrated graphics, there is no physical display output for that which makes sense as a rackmount server.
Last up we have the single exposed PCIe Gen5 full-height slot, though this is a half-length slot and also does not have any dedicated airflow, so it is best used for networking or perhaps a storage adapter rather than something like a GPU unless the card is actively cooled.
Also, just a note here, yes our particular unit got banged around in shipping and the whole chassis is slightly bent. This did not affect function in any way, but it looks pretty dramatic in the pictures.
Next, let us get inside the server to see what it offers.
Small typo:
“As mentioned previously, the Proxmox VE 8 worked fine in this configuration and we tested it with up to 196GB of memory.”
I’m guessing you either meant 96GB or 192GB. Not sure what kind of configuration would get you 196GB.
@James, thanks! I’ve fixed it.
@James 6x32GB sticks and a 1x 4GB or 2x 2GB would give you 196GB :)