ASUS RS720A-E12-RS24U Review AMD EPYC Genoa 2P with 9x PCIe Gen5 Slots

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ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Web Cover
ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Web Cover

In our ASUS RS720A-E12-RS24U review, we see how this AMD EPYC 9004 Genoa platform improves on the previous generation. At STH, we reviewed theĀ ASUS RS720A-E11-RS24U for the AMD EPYC 7002/7003 series. Now, AMD has a new processor with a new socket. With it comes a host of new technologies that make this an enormous generational upgrade.

ASUS RS720A-E12-RS24U Video Overview

For this, we are going to have a video. We did a video on the GPU-focused variant of the E11 generation that you can find here for some comparisons. We thought this new generation needed a new video:

As you will see in the video, we needed the help of ASUS, AMD, and Micron to make this review possible. It takes an enormous amount of hardware to make something like this work so a quick thank you to those companies.

Next, let us get to the hardware.

ASUS RS720A-E12-RS24U External Hardware Overview

The RS720A-E12-RS24U is a 2U chassis that should look familiar as it is a design ASUS has been using for some time. The 840mm / 33.07″ depth chassis is immediately recognizable as an ASUS design with small pull handles at either side to help move the system in and out of racks.

ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Front
ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Front

The front of the system is a 24x 2.5″ bay, hence the “RS24U” model number. Each of the 2.5″ bays is tool-less in its design, saving service time.

ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Tool Less NVMe
ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Tool Less NVMe

The bay configuration is quite interesting. One option, and the one we are looking at, has all 24x 2.5″ bays as NVMe with the first eight being SATA (SAS optional.) The other option is for a mix of NVMe and SATA/SAS.

ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Front Bay Options
ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Front Bay Options

Our system has two PCIe switches that provide lanes for twelve drive bays each. Each set of twelve 2.5″ bays has a x16 connection back to the system via these backplane cards. This is a really interesting design, as it is designed for PCIe Gen4 operation. Next week, we will discuss trends on PCIe drives, but when one sees 2023/2024 PCIe generation trends, this makes a lot of sense. We will discuss it a bit more here in the topology section of this review.

ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U NVMe Switches For Storage Backplane
ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U NVMe Switches For Storage Backplane

On the left side, we get two USB 3 Type-A ports.

ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Front Left
ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Front Left

On the right side, we have the power and ID buttons along with status LEDs.

ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Front Right
ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Front Right

The rear of the unit displays one of the main features of this system, its array of PCIe Gen5 expansion slots.

ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Rear Overview
ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Rear Overview

On the left rear, we have two full-height slots above the power supplies.

ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Rear Left Expansion
ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Rear Left Expansion

The redundant (1+1) power supplies are 2.6kW Gospower 80Plus Titanium units.

ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U 2.6kW PSUs
ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U 2.6kW PSUs

In the center of the system, we have two full-height and one low-profile expansion slot. The rear I/O block has the standard ASUS POST code display along with a VGA and two USB 3 Type-A ports for data center KVM access. There is also the out-of-band management port for the ASMB11 management solution.

ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Rear IO
ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Rear IO

Next to that is a configurable option for base I/O. Our system has a dual 10Gbase-T option, but there is a quad 1GbE option available as well. Those are connected via AMD’s new PCIe Gen3 lanes for lower-speed I/O like these 1/10GbE NICs.

The right rear is solely focused on four PCIe Gen5 full-height expansion slots.

ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Rear Right Expansion
ASUS RS720A E12 RS24U Rear Right Expansion

Let us get inside the system next to see how it works.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Thank you Patrick.
    It’s really interesting to see such performance with traditional cooling solution.
    As you mentioned, other vendors are using quite impressive cooling solutions like closed loop liquid cooling or big radiators with heat pipes.
    I wonder how such design like the one Asus used will cope with full rack scale.
    How big is the loudness of this server ?

  2. This is the best server I’ve seen from Asus or anyone else. How does Asus warranty compare to let’s say to Dell, hpe, Lenovo?

  3. It looks like a fantastic server, love the focus on I/O without worrying so much about legacy interfaces like SAS. Unfortunately as far as I can see the prices are around USD 7000, EUR 6500, AUD 20k so a bit pricey for the homelab.

  4. It isn’t a bad price for the enormous compute and I/O it provides.
    HPE and Dell will indeed be coming along with their own equivalents along with vendor price inflation too.

    Glad the likes of Asus and their counterpart Asrock, along with Supermicro exist, in all fairness 7K is easily within budget of the more advanced content-creators/homelabbers/home-AI-devs/smaller-companies dabbling in compute tasks/dev.

    Well done Asus, a lovely very usable design sticking to industry standards and some backwards compatibility at realistic pricing. A super well done to STH for covering this. I know what is on my summer shopping list this year ;)

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