What is the Dell PowerEdge XE9712?
A 1U liquid-cooled compute sled for NVIDIA’s GB300 NVL72 architecture, supplied inside Dell’s 48 RU IR9048 Open Rack v3 cabinet. Each sled carries two GB300 boards, each pairing one Grace CPU with two Blackwell Ultra GPUs, and it depends on the rack for DC power, liquid cooling and GPU-to-GPU NVLink.
How many XE9712 sleds are in an NVL72 rack?
Neither Dell’s technical guide nor its spec sheet prints a sled count. The spec sheet puts up to 72 Blackwell Ultra GPUs in one NVLink rack, and at four GPUs per sled that works out to 18 sleds — our arithmetic, not a Dell figure. NVLink switch trays, power shelves, a capacitance shelf, CDUs and a management switch fill the rest of the rack.
How much GPU and CPU memory does each sled have?
Each of the four GPUs has 288 GB of HBM3e, 1,152 GB per sled by multiplication. Dell’s feature tables and spec sheet give 480 GB of soldered LPDDR5X with ECC per Grace, which would be 960 GB per sled, but the guide’s summary quotes 480 GB without saying per CPU and never prints a sled total, so confirm the figure with Dell. There are no DIMM slots.
How much power does an XE9712 sled use?
Dell’s TDP table gives 2900 W as the total for each GB300 board (it also lists 300 W for the CPU and 1400 W for each of the two GPUs, which add up to more), and a sled holds two boards, so 5,800 W by our multiplication before fans, drives and network cards. The sled has no power supplies; it takes up to 54 VDC from the IR9048 busbar, fed by 33 kW shelves of six 5500 W AC supplies each.
Is the XE9712 liquid- or air-cooled?
Both. The CPUs and GPUs sit under combined cold plates with leak sensors, plumbed through inner manifolds to quick-disconnects at the rear that join the rack manifold, and a liquid-to-liquid CDU exchanges the heat with the facility. Eight fans cool the remaining components.
What networking does the XE9712 have?
Two CX8 mezzanines, each with two 800 Gb/s OSFP ports, support InfiniBand NDR and XDR with GPU direct over Gen6 x16. The front riser takes either one BlueField-3 B3240 DPU at up to 400 Gb/s or two CX8 C8180 cards, and there is a 1 GbE LOM plus a dedicated BMC port.
What storage does the XE9712 support?
Eight hot-swap EDSFF E1.S NVMe bays at the front and one M.2 2280 NVMe boot drive on a riser, without RAID. Every E1.S slot must hold a drive or a blank, and Dell’s thermal table pairs two drives in S0–S1 with two C8180 cards, or eight Solidigm PS1010 drives with the B3240.
Which operating system and management does the XE9712 use?
The guide lists GraceOS, an NVIDIA-qualified OS, and Dell’s spec sheet lists Ubuntu. The standard sled is managed through OpenBMC on an Aspeed AST2600 BMC with an NVIDIA HMC link to the GB300 boards; the spec sheet also describes an “XE9712 with iDRAC” version with iDRAC 10.
How does the XE9712 differ from the XE8712?
The XE8712 is a GB200 NVL4 tray for Dell’s 21-inch IR7000 rack, with 192 GB GPUs, up to four FH HL PCIe slots, iDRAC10 and two E3.S bays. The XE9712 is a GB300 NVL72 sled for the IR9048, with 288 GB GPUs, rear NVLink5 connectors to the rack’s NVS array, CX8 mezzanines at 800 Gb/s and eight E1.S bays.
Is the XE9712 end of life?
No end-of-sale or end-of-service date appears in Dell’s November 2025 guide. PowerEdge XE systems carry a standard three-year hardware warranty, and Dell recommends ProSupport Plus for them. Our end-of-life checker will list dates once Dell publishes any.
