ASUS RS720-E12-RS8G Power Consumption
On the power side, we have two 3.2kW power supplies from Delta which is great for this configuration.
Unlike the Dell PowerEdge R770 and its dual 1.5kW PSUs that we recently reviewed, with these 3.2kW power supplies we get redundancy even with GPUs installed. With three high-end GPUs, and two high-end CPUs, the power needs of this platform can easily hit 2kW just for the CPUs and GPUs. Adding eight NVMe SSDs, 32 DDR5 DIMMs, four NICs, and the cooling, this class of system can get into that 3kW range which is really impressive. If you are replacing a server, even with three PCIe GPUs from five years ago, this system can use around twice as much power which is very impressive indeed.
STH Server Spider: ASUS RS720-E12-RS8G
In the second half of 2018, we introduced the STH Server Spider as a quick reference to where a server system’s aptitude lies. Our goal is to start giving a quick visual depiction of the types of parameters that a server is targeted at.
Overall, this system has a lot of flexibility. We have seen some other 2U servers that support only two double-width GPUs, but this one supports three. While that is not the densest AI server, it is still good for a general purpose 2U server. With the massive number of PCIe slots, one can have those three GPUs and still fit four high-speed NICs at the rear which is awesome.
Final Words
The ASUS RS720-E12-RS8G is a really neat design direction from ASUS. It incorporates many of the industry standard OCP-inspired design elements that make for a flexible and expandable server. With the ability to add up to ten expansion cards, 32 DIMMs, and either P-core or E-core Intel Xeon CPUs, there is plenty to like in a platform like this.
ASUS did a great job with the serviceability of this design. Reviewing this server and the Dell PowerEdge R770 in the same week, it is easy to say that this was very similar in terms of functionality, but I actually prefer servicing this machine. Or perhaps better to say as someone who has taken apart literally hundreds of servers from different vendors over the years, if I had to pick either the RS720-E12-RS8G or the R770 to replace a NIC that failed in under 1 minute, I would prefer to do it on the ASUS. That is saying a lot.
Overall, I really like the design direction of the ASUS RS720-E12-RS8G. We have used many ASUS servers over the years and this is certainly a step forward both in the design and the capability with so many customization angles.
Seeing the design of the CPU coolers makes me wonder how well the memory modules standing right behind the extended portions will tolerate the extra heat being blown over them long-term. Those bits don’t run cool and the RAM is already running at speeds hot enough to require their own cooling system. Anyway, neat looking dual LGA-4710 system.
The design language of the PCBs is the classic ASUS mainstream one down to the fonts used, and of course black solder mask. Even half of RAM slots are black and the other half is blue. There are a lot of matching blue components from jumpers to SSD latches which contrast with the black components.
It looks like they actually care about how the server looks both externally and internally, it’s quite refreshing.
With Dell using the DC-MHS this is almost the same except it’s got another OCP NIC instead of the BOSS, ASUS is using 2.5″ not E3.S, and they’ve got standard IPMI instead of iDRAC. If ASUS can build something that’s almost the same as Dell now, then what’s the point of paying more for Dell’s “engineering????” I don’t understand why the motherboards are almost the same.
3.2kW PSUs… wow. And I thought the 2kW PSUs in the GPU server I’m building for my homelab was a lot.