14 DAY TRIAL // While riding the high of launching the X99-E WS LGA 2017-A motherboard last week, ASUS also introduced the Z10PE-D8 WS, a platform with two sockets ready to host Intel's Xeon E5 v3 central processing units. Two of them at once, to be precise.
We assumed initially that this meant that the platform, like the X99-E WS, had a third-party controller driving those seven PCI Express connectors.
Sadly, we have just been informed (by independent testers) that this is not the case. In fact, there are several things that workstation lovers and server administrators might not be too happy about.
The PCI Express conundrum
Some may say that it's not really necessary for a dual-socket motherboard to have a third-party chip running the PCI Express slots. After all, while one processor can only drive 40 lanes, the existence of a second one brings the number to 80.
Unfortunately, this is where the ones who tested the board hit a snag. They found that the ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS motherboard only saw one set of forty lanes. And they couldn't figure out why.
They theorized that the sets of 40 lanes weren't governed by the CPU, contrary to the norm. They suspect that the two groups of 40 lanes have issues “talking” with the PCI Express bus.
Presumably, a BIOS update could fix this problem, but there is no such thing yet. The support page is no help in any event.
To make the matter even more curious, the official documentation that shipped with the motherboard box says that Quad SLI multi-graphics card setups only support x8/x8/x8/x8 configuration, instead of full x16 like on the X99-E WS.
The folks who contacted us even ran four NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan blacks in SLI and were rather disappointed, considering what expectations dual-CPU mainboards come with.
The memory problem
The ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS is supposed to support 64 GB DIMM-based RAM and 512 GB LRDIMM memory setups. There are eight slots after all.
However, there doesn't seem to be any DDR4 ECC Registered 64GB LRDIMMs for sale anywhere, even though memory manufacturers have supposedly known about the platform for a fairly long while. The most optimistic prognosis for the availability of that RAM is early new year.
The disappointing conclusion
The ASUS X99-E WS enables much better figures in benchmarks despite having a single CPU socket. We're still waiting for the screenshots and full details on that matter though.
All in all, you might want to stay away from the ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS, at least until new BIOS and actual 64 GB LRDIMM memory are made for it. Unless you're trying to buy something future-proof, in which case we suppose you can still hope for the best.