ASUS RS720A-E11-RS24U Power Consumption
The power supplies for this server are 1.6kW 80Plus Platinum units. These are actually different units than we saw in the GPU version of this server.
At idle, our system was using about 0.18kW with the AMD EPYC 7763, and 16x 32GB DDR4-3200 DIMMs. Our maximum power consumption was just under 1kW. If you are coming from a Xeon E5 generation server, or a Xeon Silver server, you may see this as a lot. Compared to upcoming PCIe Gen5/ DDR5 servers, this is actually quite reasonable.
STH Server Spider: ASUS RS720A-E11-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.
This is particularly interesting. In the previous review, we actually had strong accelerator density. In this review, we note that one can still use inference accelerators, but it is not the same GPU-optimized platform we saw previously. At the same time, the potential for accelerators and networking is clear here with a large number of expansion slots.
Final Words
This was a really interesting review for us. On one hand, this was a platform that we reviewed previously. On the other hand, this server serves an almost completely different purpose.
Instead of servicing four high-power GPUs, this server is designed to be either a standard compute node or to house a lot of networking, SSDs, or lower-power accelerators. The fact that this server had the same model number in the ASUS naming convention is really interesting. A company like Dell EMC or HPE would have two model numbers likely for such a diverse range of configurations.
Perhaps that is the point, though. ASUS can build one motherboard and then use it in its 1U, 2U, and specialty GPU designs. That increases the number of configurations built on the motherboard and the number of units manufactured, thereby increasing quality.
Overall, these systems have worked well for us as we have used them. We know when our readers are going to be reading this, it is likely that the Genoa launch announcement will have happened. Something to keep in mind that there is going to be a very large generational switching cost to the DDR5/ PCIe Gen5 generation, so if you have more modest needs, many will still find the Milan platforms, like this one, attractive for years to come.
