Does the Dell PowerEdge XE9680L need liquid cooling?
Yes. Direct liquid cooling is the only cooling option Dell lists: cold plates sit on the GPUs, the NVLink switches and both processors, with separate rear tubes for the processor and GPU loops. Dell’s acoustic figures exclude the CDU, and its spec sheet lists an IR5000 rack as required.
Which GPUs does the XE9680L support?
Two NVIDIA HGX boards, each carrying eight NVLink-connected GPUs: the H200 (SXM5, 141 GB and 700 W per GPU) or the B200 (SXM6, 180 GB and 1000 W per GPU). The board is fixed at order, and the choice also decides the power supply model.
What processors and memory does the XE9680L take?
Two 5th Gen Xeon Scalable processors from a list of five, 32 to 64 cores, 300 W or 350 W. There are 32 DDR5 RDIMM slots for 64, 96 or 128 GB modules and up to 4 TB, at 5600 MT/s with one DIMM per channel or 4400 MT/s with two.
How many PCIe slots does the XE9680L have?
Twelve x16 PCIe Gen5 full-height, half-length slots, numbered 31 to 42 and fed through four PCIe switches. Each can take a 400G NDR InfiniBand/Ethernet card, 400G SmartNIC or 100 GbE NIC, up to twelve in total, and slots 33 and 39 are for DPUs above 75 W. There is also one x8 OCP 3.0 slot.
What power supplies does the XE9680L use?
Six 86 mm Titanium supplies on C21 cords, in 5+1 or 3+3 redundancy. H200 systems use 2800 W units; B200 systems use 3000 W multi-rated units that fall to 2800 W on a 200–209 V AC feed. Low-line power is not supported.
How big and heavy is the XE9680L?
The 4U chassis measures 174.3 mm tall, 1037.57 mm deep with the bezel and 482 mm across the rack ears. Fully populated it weighs 91.63 kg with H200 or 95.6 kg with B200, so Dell recommends a server lift, and its length needs checking against rear PDUs and doors.
What storage does the XE9680L have?
Eight hot-swap 2.5-inch U.2 NVMe drives at the front, direct-attached with no PERC, up to 122.88 TB raw per Dell’s spec sheet. There are no SAS, SATA, E3.S or rear bays. The operating system boots from a BOSS-N1 with two M.2 drives in hardware RAID 1.
How does the XE9680L differ from the XE9680?
Cooling and density are the main split: the XE9680L puts cold plates on its GPUs and processors in 4U, where the XE9680 relies on sixteen fans (eighteen with Gaudi 3) in 6U. The liquid-cooled model narrows the choice to 5th Gen Xeon and NVIDIA H200 or B200, but gains two extra PCIe slots (twelve against ten). The air-cooled model also offers A100, H100, H20, MI300X and Gaudi 3 boards, 4th Gen Xeon and a 16-bay E3.S front.
How does the XE9680L differ from the XE9685L?
Both are 4U and liquid-cooled, with the same published dimensions, twelve slots and eight NVMe bays. The XE9685L runs two EPYC 9005 processors, the largest with 192 cores, plus 24 DIMMs at 6400 MT/s for 3 TB, and offers only the B200 board. The XE9680L uses 5th Gen Xeon with 32 DIMMs for 4 TB, and adds an H200 option.
Is the Dell PowerEdge XE9680L end of life?
Dell’s June 2026 guide for the XE9680L gives no model-wide end-of-sale or end-of-support date. The server end-of-life checker on our site shows Dell’s dates as soon as they are published.