Inspur NF5280M6 2U Intel Xeon Server Review

Inspur NF5280M6 Power Consumption

Our system came equipped with the 1.6kW 80Plus Platinum power supply option. Again, Inspur offers 500W-2kW options in Platinum and Titanium efficiency ratings.

The system itself was able to peak just above 1kW with Platinum 8380’s. The system also supports multiple GPUs and options that we do not have populated so it seems like higher-end configurations could easily surpass the 1.6kW figure. At the same time, lower-end Xeon Silver configurations may look at the 500W PSUs for better efficiency.

STH Server Spider: Inspur NF5280M6

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 system is designed for all-around storage. We specifically had the 2.5″ 24-bay version of this system, but other LFF versions would see this spider chart skewed away from the high-performance storage and more towards the capacity storage. A 2U server like this is not designed to achieve maximum compute density or GPU density. Instead, it is designed to be a platform that can fill a number of different roles with a common base platform. In that respect, the NF5280M6 has achieved its goal.

Final Words

At this point, the Inspur Systems NF5280M6 is what one would expect. It is a solid 2U server from Inspur, built from many of the open and industry-standard technologies that are popular today. There are a large number of expandability options and customization options in this system so an organization can qualify a base 2U server and use it for many roles.

There are still some very nice touches in this system. Inspur’s airflow guide makes servicing CPUs and DIMMs extremely simple. In 2021 we had a DIMM combust (it was a DIMM issue, and not in an Inspur server) so DIMM failures and accessibility is top-of-mind right now.

Over this quarter, we have servers from Inspur, Dell, HPE, and Lenovo that we will be reviewing. In each, we are going to focus on some of the design philosophies for each company. With the NF5280M6, one can quickly understand Inspur’s design philosophy. The system is designed with many industry-standard components and makes use of an OCP NIC 3.0 slot as well as even an OCP 2.0 storage mezzanine slot. That is largely influenced by the fact that Inspur sells to many hyper-scale clients. These large clients demand that these open standards are adopted and that influences these servers.

Overall, the Inspur NF5280M6 performed just as it should. It is a solid 2U server that is easy to service, performs well, and has a high degree of customization making it a great general-purpose server platform.