Dell PowerEdge R770AP Review One Fast Intel Xeon 6 Server

Dell PowerEdge R770AP Internal Hardware Overview

We did not get a great shot going from the front backplanes to the rear, so instead here is the rear to the front with the fan modules out.

Here is a quick look at that E3.S backplane providing connectivity to the storage.

Each of the 8-bay sections is given a slot number.

Here is the other side.

Behind the front storage section sits an internal fan partition with six fans. This is the primary cooling partition for the chassis, separating the drive area from the compute section and keeping airflow predictable across both zones.

Dell has cable throughways in this partition that help keep airflow through the fans and not leaking around the sides.

Here is a look at the six fans.

These Sunon units have hot swap connectors to make it easy to replace fans.

With the fans out, you can see the MCIO cables running from the motherboard to the storage up front.

The cable channels also allow these front MCIO and drives to reach the rear of the chassis.

Two Intel Xeon 6900 series processors feature substantial silver heatsinks with copper heat pipes. DDR5 DIMMs sit beside and between the processor positions in this air-cooled 2U system design.

If you think these heatsinks are big, just wait for what we will show you in a few days.

The memory layout is another area where the PowerEdge R770AP diverges most visibly from the standard PowerEdge R770, which we reviewed last year. Each processor gets twelve DDR5 channels with a single DIMM per channel (1DPC), giving 24 total slots across both sockets. This memory architecture differs from the R770’s eight channels per socket with two DIMMs per channel. The -AP offers more channels per socket but fewer total DIMM slots (24 versus 32) in this configuration.

If you have seen the PCIe Gen6 servers, the DDR5 DIMM slot pitch here seems luxurious in comparison since there are “only” 24 DIMMs next to the two sockets. This is less of a challenge in this generation, but it ramps up considerably in the next generation, just getting airflow through the spaces between the DIMMs.

In this platform, since it is a Xeon 6900P platform, you can use either DDR5 ECC RDIMMs or MRDIMMs. The MRDIMMs are useful if you just need extra memory bandwidth.

Here is a look at the other side.

Moving toward the rear, we reach the expansion architecture. Here you can see the risers labeled 1, 3, and 5 installed across the back edge, with positions for 2 and 4 adjacent to them. Each module carries a handle and blue release latch, and together they represent Dell’s modular approach to rear I/O. It also shows off how Dell has service guides and great labeling throughout the system.

Since these are very configurable, we thought we would just show you what they look like in this system.

Here is a look at Riser 1 outside of the system:

Also, here is flipping it over, where you can see the motherboard connector and the card built-in.

Under the main risers, there is often another layer of risers.

Riser 3 has something really neat. Instead of just being a PCIe riser, you can see an OCP NIC 3.0 slot.

While it is an SFF with an internal latch design, not an SFF with a pull-tab design, it is still a neat way to get another OCP NIC 3.0 slot in a system like this.

Pulling these out, we can see Riser 4 underneath.

Riser 4 appears as another small green board beside the central riser, with nearby connectors. This view shows the module’s separate physical position within the chassis layout. Once we get further inside, we can see BOSS module and more.

Riser 5 is the final installed module in our configuration.

Here we have Riser 5 with a Broadcom NIC.

This system uses 56G PAM4 SerDes networking, so we have 2x 200GbE ports here. We did not get to do it yet, but we are hoping to get these NICs tested through our Keysight IxNetwork XGS2 appliances.

Here is a quick look at the riser’s connection and latching.

Dell also has internal power headers to provide power to different components in the system. It is common these days to see cabled power to risers, NICs, and GPUs.

This is the other side where you can see what the power connectors here look like.

Amidst the internal PCIe Gen5 headers for the risers, we still found a USB port inside.

Here is a good look at the riser headers.

Here is another with the guide pins/ locks for the risers.

Dell’s design team is keeping these slots close to the CPUs to help with the signaling as PCIe Gen5 has a very finite physical reach.

Next, let us get to the topology.