This is one that we missed during our launch coverage but is also a server we will be reviewing in the not-too-distant future per our Editor-in-Chief Patrick. The Tyan Thunder CX GC68A-B7126 is a dual-socket 1U platform. This is also a cost-optimized platform designed to pack more cores into 1U.
Tyan Thunder CX GC68A-B7126
The front of the Tyan GC68A-B7126 has twelve 2.5″ drive bays. Tyan has a newer chassis that can take advantage of more drives by moving functionality to the rack ears (e.g. the power button and USB port) and by using thinner drive trays. This increases density by 20% over ten 2.5″ bay models from previous generations.
Inside we have two Intel Xeon processors, or to be more precise 3rd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable Ice Lake processors. With this generation, we get 8-channel memory per CPU and up to DDR4-3200 support. Here Tyan is utilizing 8 DIMMs per CPU which is one DIMM per channel.
With Intel’s 10nm Ice Lake we get PCIe Gen4 which is exposed via two risers on the rear of the chassis. There is an OCP NIC 2.0 slot as well. This is designed for lower-cost networking than OCP NIC 3.0 slots that are becoming more common.
On the rear, we also get redundant power supplies, two 1GbE ports, an IPMI port, two USB 3.0 ports, and VGA/ serial. These are accompanied by redundant power supplies.
Final Words
It has been a while since we looked at a Tyan server with an Intel Xeon Scalable solution. As you can tell from the cover photo, this will be the next server we review from Tyan. We just did not manage to get it into our Ice Lake launch piece. If you want to learn more about the new Xeon platform, you can read our launch piece: Intel Xeon Ice Lake Edition Marks the Start and End of an Era. More to come.
Two sockets, 12 drive bays, and…limited to 110-115 MB/sec throughput by 1 Gb ports? NIce! :)
My company is still spec’ing out HP DL servers with 10K SAS drives and 32Gb memory for our customer on prem installations.
I predict that I will buy one of these servers for my basement lab before they do at work.
Mark
I have virtually the same machine but from Supermicro – dual socket Ice Lake SP – which are being used a VM servers… The point of the slots is to allow you to put in 2 Connect6 NICs each with dual 100Gb/s Ethernet. No on will use the copper connections – other than the OOB / BMC functions.
Silly observation.
Dallas
They still make 10K/15K spinning rust drives? and I have 32GB in my desktop machines – out of curiosity what would those machines be used for? I assume server, but what will they run?