Testing the latest x86 rack servers and low power server CPUs

Comparing the Servers

The interesting thing about the Supermicro Twin² is that four servers share two PSUs. The PSUs are of course sized to run four nodes, so it would not be fair to compare power consumption with only one node running. Getting enough memory and CPUs was not easy, but we managed to gather 12 DIMMs and four Xeon X5570 chips. Our first test is with the Xeon L5520, so we did not include the Supermicro Twin². The ASUS Duo server has one independent PSU for each node, so we only powered up one node.

The ASUS RS700D-E6/PS8 beats the platform that Intel uses as the low power reference design: kudos to the ASUS engineers are in order. The ASUS server is most likely one of the lowest consuming Xeon based servers on the planet. We compared this server to the Twin² by doubling the power numbers we registered when running both nodes. We could not include the Chenbro server since it would not start with the Xeon X5570.

The ASUS is one of the most efficient servers we have ever measured, but the clever design of Supermicro gives the latter a small edge. Four servers running at full load consume only 171W per server node. We expect a fully loaded server with two X5570 and 24GB per node to consume about 259W (171W + 58W for the extra CPU + six DIMMs at 5W), which is still very low for such a high performance configuration. Let us check out idle power.

Having fewer PSUs helps of course. The Supermicro Twin² is once again the winner with only 112W per server node.