ASUS RS720Q-E8-RS8-P and ASUS Z10PH-D16 Thread

[Patrick]

Since a number of us just purchased these I wanted to start a thread. The ASUS Z10PH-D16 is the motherboard in each of the four RS720Q-E8-RS8-P nodes. Feel free to share notes/ information here.

My notes
Power Supply - these are Compuware 2kW 80Plus Titanium PSUs. They appear to be compatible with the Supermicro/ Ablecom parts. Compuware - Ablecom - Supermicro are related parties.

M.2 - This is a 2242 m.2 slot that can be either SATA or PCIe (using CPU2.) My plan is to use 16GB Kingston drives (e.g. lot of 10 x 16 GB Kingston M.2 NGFF SSD, SAME DAY SHIPPING. | eBay ) in the m.2 slot for OS boot. These drives arrived and are the correct size NGFF 2242

There is an internal USB type-A header but you will need to use something small like a SanDisk Fit

. Very tight clearances.

I do not see AUX power connectors for CPUs on these boards.

Heatsinks were included as were rails. Heatsinks are 2011-3 narrow ILM.

Z10PH-D16 manual link http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb...only.pdf?_ga=1.260029763.851285873.1480896544

Product page Z10PH-D16 | Servers & Workstations | ASUS Global

Feel free to add more to this thread as you start working with the boards.

 

[Marsh]

Fedex delivered the ASUS server at around 2pm, at 3:10pm , USPS delivered 7 x E5-2650 v3 QFSB cpu.
10 minutes later, powered up the first node with 1 CPU and 2 x 16gb ram, running memtest now.

So relief that the QFSB ES cpu booted the ASUS Z10PH board.
The server is not noisy for now ( only 1 node with single CPU )

 

[TLN]

Idea of USB header AND M.2 slot is great. AFAIK, there's no USB header on Z10-PE boards, so you're forced to connect external drive for storage.
Here you can boot a hypervisor and start VM's without extra SSDs or something: boot from USB and use m.2 as storage

 

[MiniKnight]

Mine came with BIOS 3202 x64 dated 04/04/2016 and it worked with retail spec'd E5 V4's out of the box.

 

[Marsh]

@Patrick

Please tell us which E5 v4 ES CPU that you installed yesterday?
Thanks

 

[Patrick]

@Marsh in the ASUS there is a set of E5-2683 V3, E5-2670 V3 and E5-2699 V4. Still one node open.

Other ES CPUs are in different chassis now since we had a request to test a 2U4N that sucked extra CPUs.

I think I may sell off a few V3/ V4 1U and 2U platforms consolidating into this one and just use the lab's 40GbE for storage.

How is your project coming?

 

[Marsh]

I have 7 x E5-2650 v3 QFSB CPU and total 16 x 16gb RAM on hand ( need to buy more RAM ).
Took a week to test+ verify+stress test all 8 CPU sockets , and 64 RAM slots works in case I need to RMA the hardware. Good news, there is no hardware problem with the server.

Today, install a LSI 9207-8e , connected few SSD in a JBOD 1u case to the node, start install Azure Stack TP2 .

 

[Tarball]

Installed an E5 2683 V3 ES QEY7 2.0GHz 14Core 35MB 120W LGA2011-3 -- No problems
-- Will post more models as i populate the sockets.

 

[Patrick]

Thus far I have:

• 2x E5-2683 V3
• 2x E5-2699 V4
• 2x E5-2670 V3
• 2x E5-2698 V3 (ES QGEN)

All in the first chassis all with Mellanox ConnectX-3 Pro EN 40GbE cards. I am going to make a second, low power chassis.

 

[Tarball]

Here's the chassis's manual: RS720Q-E8-RS8-P | Servers & Workstations | ASUS USA

 

[Patrick]

Also added 2x dual E5-2628L V4 nodes in chassis 2.

 

[J--]

Anyone find any cards that might fit the proprietary slot? The interface looks like standard PCIe 3.0, just very very short.

Took the bracket off my single port ConnectX-2 to test, a few mm too long.

 

[J--]

This M.2 adapter looks like a possibility.

Amazon.com: MF-DT129 (PCIe 3.0 x4 3.3V 5A Host Adapter for PCIe-NVMe M.2 up to 110mm SSD): Computers & Accessories

 

[Tarball]

Added 6x Intel Xeon similar to E5-2683 v3 ES 2GHz/14C/3.5MB L2/35MB L3/Socket 2011-3
No problems

Also added a ASUS PEB-10G/57840-2S 10GbE SFP+ Network Adapter ; no problems either.
I installed 3 different brands of memory, Samsung, Kingston (KVR21R15D4K4/128) and Sun Pacific (Fry's brand). All work fine.

Careful with memory that has heat-sinks wrapping the DIMMs completely; the memory holder brackets go pretty high and i was unable to fit sticks with those heatsinks.

 

[J--]

Damn, QFQKs have gotten pricey. I have a pair at $250/each about 6 months ago, I need to see what's a good price/performance nowadays.

 

[Marsh]

@Tarball

You score 6 x E5-2683 , nice

 

[Tarball]

@Tarball

You score 6 x E5-2683 , nice

yep, $333 each. Expensive but best deal at the time

 

[Patrick]

Hey @J-- Thank you for posting that! I was thinking about trying the same experiment. You just saved me 30 minutes! I appreciate it.

 

[Patrick]

Here is a fun one:

Still awaiting a few more 40GbE NICs.

 

[Marsh]

I love the digital status LED display. AA are good.