ASUS RS720A-E12-RS24U Power Consumption
The power supplies in this system are 2.6kW 80Plus Titanium units, and that makes a lot of sense.
In our testing, we regularly were able to get to 1.1kW to 1.2kW using 24x 32GB Micron DDR5 DIMMs, and the AMD EPYC 9654 CPUs plus a high-speed NIC and two NVMe SSDs. ASUS offers 80Plus Platinum 2kW units which are probably sufficient for lower-spec systems. For higher-end systems with high-power GPUs, the 2.6kW power supplies will make a lot of sense for folks to use.
STH Server Spider: ASUS RS720A-E12-RS24U
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.
The server is about flexibility. That means that it checks a number of boxes due to the sheer number of slots. Utilizing the AMD EPYC Genoa allows for more compute density than in the previous generation of 2U dual socket servers. We review many highly specialized servers. This one is a bit different since it is more focused on flexibility than a specific optimization point. Perhaps that flexibility is the optimization point.
Final Words
ASUS made some really interesting design choices with the new E12 generation. Things like the x16 or 2x x8 PCIe Gen5 slots, the optional OCP NIC 3.0 module, front NVMe backplanes and so forth are quite unique. Without having reviewed different configurations of the E11 generation, some of those design choices would probably seem a bit strange. With the generational context, we know that these design choices were made to provide flexibility for different configurations while utilizing the same motherboard.
We hope that in the future, ASUS will publish BIOS and instructions on getting popular CXL Memory expansion modules working with its system. That is partially the state of the industry at this point. Across all vendors, we have similar feedback as we are still in the very early days of CXL as we are doing this review.
Overall the ASUS RS720A-E12-RS24U is a massive jump in generational performance. That includes I/O, maximum CPU and memory performance, as well as a large per-core performance jump. If you simply want a huge generational leap in performance, then this is a great server platform.
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 ?
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?
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.
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 😉