Tyan Thunder CX GC68A-B7126 Power Consumption
In terms of power consumption, we did not have the fullest of configurations with the Intel Xeon Gold 6338’s with only 16x 32GB DDR4-3200, two Kioxia CD6 NVMe SSDs, and a Mellanox ConnectX-4 LE 25GbE adapter.
We tested these in our data center with 70% RH on 208V power. With the Intel Xeon Gold 6338 CPUs we saw a maximum of around 0.74kW. Under normal “heavy” 70-90% usage the system was often in the 0.5-0.6kW range. It seems like the 850W power supply is plenty for the system given our results and the fact there are limited expansion slots in the system due to the 1U form factor.
STH Server Spider: Tyan Thunder CX GC68A-B7126
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.
This server hits a number of important areas. There are a number of trade-offs though. As a 1U dual-socket EATX platform, it is never going to be the densest solution. That is not what the target market demands. Instead, this is a solid all-around platform for those who are realistically looking to put 1-4 drives (most of these servers are not using a full 12 drives), two lower-cost CPUs, up to 16 DIMMs, and perhaps a higher-speed 10GbE/ 25GbE NIC. That is the target market for a server like this. While it can scale up quite a bit from that type of configuration, there is still a trade-off in cost optimization versus density.
Final Words
Overall, the Thunder CX GC68A-B7126 is a really interesting server. We showed throughout this review how the server was designed for a higher-volume cost-optimized theme. These types of servers are very popular in dedicated or shared hosting platforms, as an example.
Something we would invite our readers to do is to take a look at this server compared to our Tyan Transport CX GC68B8036-LE review. There, you will see many similar features such as the dual PCIe Gen4 x16 riser being used. Tyan has a design language that extends across single and dual-socket offerings in a similar form factor. If you wanted to offer a mix of CPU configurations in this form factor, Tyan has solutions for that.
The server itself worked well in our testing. We test many high-end GPU, storage, and dense CPU compute platforms at STH. One can certainly feel the contrast between those systems and the more cost-optimized servers. Perhaps that is the point. Focusing on a specific market where $50 or $100 differences can make or break deployments leads to different design philosophies.
Overall, the Thunder CX GC68A-B7126 worked well for us. For those using 2nd generation Intel Xeon Scalable platforms, upgrading to the Ice Lake generation means more cores, more memory bandwidth, PCIe Gen4, and more. For this segment of the market, that can lead to a massive performance boost.
