EVGA's SR-3 Dark motherboard for Intel's Xeon W-3175X arrives for $1,800

[onetheycallEric]

In a nutshell: EVGA showed off a prototype of its SR-3 Dark motherboard at Computex 2019, built especially for Intel's Xeon W-3175X. The SR-3 Dark would be destined to challenge both Asus' ROG Dominus Extreme and Gigabyte's C621 Aorus Xtreme motherboards -- the only other two motherboards supporting Intel's 28-core, 56 thread monster. After months of waiting, the EVGA SR-3 Dark is finally available for pre-order with a $1,800 price tag -- and that's $200 off of its $2,000 list price.

Intel's 28-core Xeon W-3175X is carved from Skylake-SP silicon and uses the massive LGA3647 socket, which complicates motherboard selection and cooling. As such, special accommodations are necessary. This is why the EVGA SR-3 Dark is only the third motherboard available that can house the chip. Pre-orders are currently live on EVGA's website.

Cooling the chip will prove more limited, as there's currently only two aftermarket options: The $400 Asetek 690LX-PN and EKWB's EK-Annihilator Pro water blocks.

The EVGA SR-3 Dark uses the E-ATX form factor and is built from a 16-layer PCB. The SR-3 Dark boasts a 24-phase power delivery system, with four 8-pin EPS connectors providing power to the Xeon W-3175X.

The SR-3 Dark will also come with a custom water block spanning the VRM and the C622 chipset. The water block is also capable of passively cooling these components, according to EVGA.

The LGA3647 socket is flanked by three DIMM slots on each side for hexa-channel memory support, capable of a combined 192GB of DDR4 4000MHz+, ECC LRDIMM, or ECC RDIMM memory.

The EVGA SR-3 Dark also offers a bevy of connectivity options including SATA III, USB 3.1 Gen1, USB 3.1 Gen2, M.2 Key-M 110mm slots, and U.2 ports. The SR-3 Dark offers six full length PCIe slots; four slots run at x16, while the remaining two run at x8.

EVGA is including features such as a triple BIOS switch for switching between three different ROMs, which can be useful for overclocking ambitions. There's also a ProbeIT adapter for measuring voltage with a multimeter, as well as a Safeboot button for quickly restoring stable BIOS settings.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/83348-evga-sr-3-dark-motherboard-intel-xeon-w.html

 

[Heclone]

Strx4 MB are 3 times cheaper and TR 3000 performs way better than this Xeon while costing less too... This is a pointless product again

 

[VitalyT]

Looks like an attempt to match that which Apple offers as the top tear for its new Mac Pro.

 

[Uncle Al]

I'm just glad somebody ELSE has the money to run these tests!!!!!

 

[ypsylon]

Dear TS: Don't want to do your job, but seems I have to. Phanteks offers LGA3647 waterblock for both Narrow and Square ILM, just like an Alphacool and Bitspower (only Narrow). So yeah it's magically 3 more options with minimal effort of researching the matter - I didn't knew only about Bitspower, rest was well publicized in the press releases.

While board is gorgeous, and I'm sure comes with reliability of EVGA boards I've used tons and tons, but it's basically DOA matter. Paying basically 7k USD for combo to just start the computer is bonkers when competition does that for half the price and 1/3rd of realistic power draw (if not OC). 1kW of power required for CPU - WTH is wrong with this picture? 3647 has merit, but drop the price by 65% of the platform, and then offer normal CPU not this *****ic Xeon-W which draws as much power as small house. Plus there are about 2 cases in the world which can hold boards for 3647 with two PSUs. One is well over 1000 $ from InWin and another is that humongous Raijintek whatever the name. Maybe I've missed some, but not many.


P.S. And one other thing. It's server e-ATX (330x305 mm) not more common desktop E-ATX (277x305)

 

[QuantumPhysics]

Looks like an attempt to match that which Apple offers as the top tear for its new Mac Pro.

You beat me to it.

And unlike the Mac Pro which can address up to 1.5 TB of RAM, this stops at 192GB.

So many "talkers" claiming how much better a machine they can build then Apple's Mac Pro...but when you really try to match up the components and then try to match the performance - they can't.

 

[Soulburn74]

Typical client oriented AMD Vs Intel argument not withstanding......

Most users of the W platform will not look to the gaming segment to buy a motherboard to put it in. They (or more accurately their employer) will look to OEM's for a complete solution. (HP Z platform etc)

For those looking to home build a workstation, a much cheaper alternative exists: SuperMicro.

They don't have a MB launched yet for this processor class , but going back to previous generation W2.x They have a $300 solution that competes with asus' c422 sage/pro $700/$1200) solutions. These boards will provide more support for workstation/server class add-ons such as SAS/HBA controllers, or direct support for u.2 class nvme drives that client side motherboards don't always play nice with or have at all.

 

[hishnash]

Looks like an attempt to match that which Apple offers as the top tear for its new Mac Pro.

Its a long way from that since it only supports up to 192GB of ram. And does not support any ECC options at all.

 

[VitalyT]

does not support any ECC options at all.

It does support ECC, check the official spec. Here's another article: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/evga-sr-3-dark-goes-up-for-pre-order-at-1800-dollars

You can pair the motherboard with ECC (error-correcting code) memory like RDIMMs (Registered DIMMs) and LRDIMMs (Load-Reduced DIMMs).