Continuing our Ice Lake launch coverage, we have the launch of new ASUS 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Ice Lake servers. We would have had this one last week, but we published our ASUS RS720A-E11-RS24U Review AMD EPYC 7763 and NVIDIA A100 in 2U review and try to space articles out a bit. ASUS has four new server platforms at launch for the Ice Lake Xeon series.
ASUS 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Ice Lake Servers
With the new launch, there are four main server platforms with variants of each. The RS700-E10 is the 1U platform. The RS720-E10 is the 2U platform. ASUS has a 2U 4-node platform in the RS720Q-E10. Finally, there is a GPU platform in the ESC4000-E10.
ASUS RS700-E10 1U Servers
The ASUS RS700-E10 series is the company’s 1U series that has dual Intel Xeon Ice Lake CPUs with up to 32 DIMMs. One can also use up to one dual-slot GPU with up to four PCIe slots.
One other interesting feature is that ASUS is using the denser 12x 2.5″ NVMe SSD front panel bay.
ASUS RS720-E10 2U Servers
For those that want larger servers with more expansion, the ASUS RS720-E10 series is a dual-socket 2U server. This can support nine PCIe 4.0 slots and up to four dual-slot GPUs.
The larger front area allows for up to 24x NVMe SSDs. If you saw our recent ASUS RS720A-E11-RS24U review many of the features will be similar.
ASUS RS720Q-E10 Servers
The ASUS RS720Q-E10 series is the company’s 2U 4-node (2U4N) line. These have dual CPUs in 1DPC (16 DIMMs per node.) They also have an OCP 3.0 NIC slot, two M.2 slots, and 1 PCIe slot per node.
The front of these systems can have 24x NVMe SSDs or 6x drives per node.
ASUS ESC4000-E10
This is one that reminds us of a system we reviewed. The ASUS ESC4000-E10 series servers are designed for GPUs and accelerators. With the Intel version of this server, there are two CPUs in 1DPC (16 DIMMs total) on the CPU side. One can then fit up to four dual-slot GPUs in the system.
This reminds us a lot of the ASUS ESC4000A-E10 we reviewed, with a key difference. ASUS uses two Ice Lake CPUs instead of a single AMD EPYC CPU on the unit we tested.
Final Words
ASUS has an updated server line with Ice Lake Xeons which is what we would expect for a long-time server maker. This generation is a major jump in performance and features, especially with the 8-channel memory, PCIe Gen4, and expanded core counts. As always, stay tuned to STH as we hopefully get the opportunity to test these new servers over the next few quarters.
You can learn more about the new platform from Intel in our Intel Xeon Ice Lake Edition Marks the Start and End of an Era article and the accompanying video here:
