Dell PowerEdge R7725 | 2U EPYC 9005 192-Core Server

The R7725 Is the R7625 Replacement You Have Been Waiting For

Dell’s 2U dual-socket AMD line moved from 4th Gen EPYC (Genoa, R7625) to 5th Gen EPYC 9005 (Turin-class Zen5) with the PowerEdge R7725. The jump is not incremental: up to 192 Zen5 cores per socket, DDR5 at 6400 MT/s, 450W-class accelerators, 40x E3.S Gen5 NVMe bays and iDRAC10 management. This page walks the platform spec and the migration path from R7625.

R7625 to R7725: What Changed

Feature	R7625 (previous gen)	R7725
Processors	2x EPYC 4th Gen (Zen4), up to 128 cores	2x EPYC 5th Gen 9005 (Zen5), up to 192 cores per CPU
Memory	24 DDR5, up to 4800 MT/s	24 DDR5, up to 6400 MT/s, 12 channels per CPU
Accelerators	2x 300W double-width / 6x 75W single-width	2x 450W double-width / 6x single-width
Storage front	Up to 24x 2.5-inch	Up to 40x E3.S Gen5 NVMe, 16x 2.5-inch + 8x U.2 NVMe, 24x 2.5-inch
Management	iDRAC9	iDRAC10 with Redfish, Racadm, Quick Sync 2, OME APEX AIOps
Power	800-3200W options	800-3200W Titanium incl. 3200W 200-240VAC/HVDC, M-CRPS 73.5mm/60mm
Weight	Max 34.4 kg	Max 25.1 kg – significantly lighter chassis
Depth	772.13 mm with bezel	802.4 mm with bezel

The 192-core Zen5 ceiling plus 6400 MT/s memory directly benefits data warehouse, eCommerce transaction tiers, databases and HPC – the workloads Dell targets for this platform.

Platform Specifications

Attribute	R7725
Form factor	2U rack; 86.8 x 482 x 802.4 mm with bezel (801.51 mm without); max 25.1 kg
Processors	2x 5th Gen AMD EPYC 9005 (Zen5), up to 192 cores per CPU, 500W TDP; CXL 2.0 Type 3 memory
Memory	24 DDR5 RDIMM ECC slots (12 channels per CPU), up to 6400 MT/s
Storage	Up to 40x E3.S Gen5 NVMe; 16x 2.5-inch SAS/SATA + 8x U.2 NVMe; 24x 2.5-inch; 12x 3.5-inch; boot via BOSS-N1 DC-MHS (2x M.2 NVMe HW RAID 1)
PCIe	Up to 8x Gen5 x16 slots; rear OCP FLOP (DC-MHS compliant); PCIe link encryption
GPU	Up to 2x 450W double-width or 6x single-width accelerators
RAID	PERC 12/13 front, PERC 13 external options; FPGA PESTI support; software RAID N/A
Management	iDRAC10, iDRAC Direct, Redfish RESTful API, Racadm CLI, Quick Sync 2, OME + APEX AIOps
Security	TPM 2.0 (FIPS, CC-TCG), Secure Erase, silicon root of trust, Secured Component Verification, System Lockdown
Power	Dual hot-swap redundant: 3200W Titanium (200-240VAC/HVDC), 2400W Titanium, 1800W, 1500W, 1400W -48VDC options; M-CRPS form factor
OS	Ubuntu Server LTS, Windows Server with Hyper-V, RHEL, SLES, VMware ESXi (Dell-certified releases)

Migration Path from R7625

1. Inventory the R7625 fleet: record guest core counts, memory working set and NVMe layout; Zen5’s 192-core ceiling typically halves the node count.
2. Validate the OS layer: confirm hypervisor and RHEL/Ubuntu versions are supported on EPYC 9005 – most 2024+ releases are; older kernels may need a minor bump for Zen5.
3. Move data on Gen5: restore databases onto E3.S Gen5 NVMe; 6400 MT/s DDR5 reduces column-scan and in-memory latencies.
4. Cut over per workload: eCommerce and data warehouse tiers first, HPC batch last, keeping one R7625 node as rollback until the window closes.

Where the 450W GPU Headroom Matters

The R7625 topped out at 300W double-width accelerators; the R7725 supports 2x 450W cards. For inference and fine-tuning nodes that need a single high-power accelerator plus dual-socket compute, the R7725 replaces a separate GPU box – see our on-prem AI inference guide for accelerator cluster patterns. The 3200W Titanium PSU pair handles the worst-case power envelope with 1+1 redundancy.

Front Bay Configurations

Five front-bay layouts are offered on this chassis, and the spread between them is the widest in the AMD line: from a bare compute node with no backplane to forty E3.S Gen5 bays carrying a full all-NVMe database tier. The backplane is fixed at order, so this is the one decision that cannot be revisited after delivery.

The forty-bay E3.S configuration is the headline. It puts more Gen5 NVMe devices in a 2U chassis than most storage arrays delivered five years ago, and on a dual-socket EPYC 9005 platform with 128 lanes of Gen5 per CPU there is enough fabric to feed them. The 2.5-inch options exist for buyers with existing SAS or U.2 stock, and the twelve-bay 3.5-inch configuration exists for capacity-tier work where spinning media still makes economic sense.

Rear bays are worth specifying at the same time. A pair of rear E3.S or 2.5-inch drives gives you a physically separate tier for logs, boot mirrors or a fast recovery copy, without consuming a front bay that could hold production data.

R7725 front bay configurations

Configuration	Media	Where it fits
40 × E3.S Gen5	E3.S NVMe	All-NVMe database or analytics tier
24 × 2.5-inch	SAS, SATA or NVMe	Mixed fleets reusing existing drive stock
16 × 2.5-inch + 8 × U.2	Mixed SAS and NVMe	Two-tier storage inside one chassis
12 × 3.5-inch	SAS or SATA	Capacity tier, object and backup targets
No backplane	External storage only	Compute nodes attached to a SAN
Rear 2 × 2.5-inch or E3.S	SAS, SATA or NVMe	Logs, boot mirror, recovery copy
BOSS-N1 DC-MHS	2 × M.2 NVMe RAID 1	OS boot, independent of the data backplane

Power Budget: Matching PSUs to CPU and GPU Load

The R7725 takes 500 W processors and 450 W accelerators in the same chassis, which puts the worst-case envelope well above what the previous generation needed. Two 500 W CPUs alone are 1,000 W before memory, drives and fans are counted; add two 450 W GPUs and the compute load reaches 1,900 W, which is why the 3,200 W Titanium pair exists.

In practice most builds do not run CPU and GPU at peak simultaneously. An inference node spends its life with the accelerators loaded and the CPUs comparatively idle, while a database node has no GPUs at all and sits comfortably on a 1,800 W or 2,400 W pair. Size for the real workload profile rather than the datasheet maximum, but leave headroom for the 1+1 redundancy to survive a single supply failure at full load.

The 3,200 W units require 200–240 VAC or HVDC input. That is a rack-level decision as much as a server decision: confirm the PDU outlet type and the per-outlet current rating before committing, because a 3,200 W supply on a 120 V feed is not a configuration that exists.

Power supply options and typical load

Rating	Typical build
800 W	Light single-tier builds with modest drive counts
1,100 W	Standard dual-socket compute, no accelerators
1,500 W	Full memory population, moderate drive count
1,800 W Titanium	Full memory plus dense NVMe, no GPU
2,400 W Titanium	Maximum CPU and drive load, or one 450 W GPU
3,200 W Titanium	2 × 500 W CPUs plus 2 × 450 W GPUs
1,400 W −48 VDC	Telco and central-office DC racks

Buying a Used or Refurbished R7725

The R7725 is a recent platform and the second-hand supply reflects that: mostly cloud and service-provider decommissions, generally well specified, and priced close to new. The savings come from configuration fit rather than from age.

Confirm the front backplane first, since the difference between a forty-bay E3.S chassis and a twenty-four-bay 2.5-inch chassis is the difference between an all-flash node and a mixed-media one. Confirm the PSU pair and its input class, because a 3,200 W build needs the right rack power and a mismatched single supply is expensive to source. Confirm whether the build was specified with DLC, since that determines the rack plumbing. And confirm the iDRAC10 licence tier, because System Lockdown and full telemetry depend on the Enterprise or Datacenter entitlement.

Ask for the processor SKU rather than the core count. EPYC 9005 spans a wide range of core counts, TDPs and cache sizes under the same generation name, and a 192-core part and a 128-core part are materially different machines at the same model number.

Detailed Specs, Dimension by Dimension

Networking

• Rear OCP FLOP slot (DC-MHS compliant) carries OCP NIC 3.0 mezzanine modules
• Up to 8x PCIe Gen5 x16 slots for full-height NICs and DPUs at 32 GT/s
• PCIe link encryption supported end-to-end for sensitive fabrics

Front and Rear I/O

• Front I/O per config: USB and iDRAC Direct (Micro-AB) on the front panel; optional metal bezel
• Rear: dedicated iDRAC Ethernet port, USB ports and video output; OCP FLOP on the DC-SCM
• No LCD – this platform uses the metal bezel option for rack identification

Riser and PCIe Architecture

• 8x Gen5 x16 slots across risers; plan slot-to-NUMA affinity for latency-sensitive database traffic
• Bifurcation supported for x8/x8 and lower splits where the riser allows

RAID and Boot

• Front PERC 12 (H965i) or PERC 13 class; external PERC 13 for expansion enclosures
• BOSS-N1 DC-MHS: hardware RAID 1 with 2x M.2 NVMe (480GB/960GB) for OS boot
• Software RAID not offered – use PERC or hardware controllers for parity RAID

Security

• TPM 2.0 FIPS and CC-TCG certified, Secure Erase, silicon root of trust
• Secured Component Verification hardware integrity check at boot
• System Lockdown (requires iDRAC10 Enterprise or Datacenter entitlement)

Management

• iDRAC10: remote console, virtual media, telemetry streaming, lifecycle controller
• Redfish RESTful API, Racadm CLI, iDRAC Direct, Quick Sync 2 wireless
• OpenManage Enterprise with APEX AIOps Observability, Power Manager, Services and Update Manager plugins; vCenter and System Center integrations; Ansible and Terraform modules

Physical and Environmental

• 2U rack; 86.8 x 482 x 802.4 mm (with bezel), 801.51 mm without; max 25.1 kg
• Operating ambient 10-35 deg C standard; DLC option for high-TDP CPU SKUs

Operating Systems

• VMware ESXi, Windows Server with Hyper-V, RHEL, SLES, Ubuntu Server LTS – Dell-certified matrix

Power

• Dual hot-swap redundant PSUs, M-CRPS 73.5mm and 60mm: 3200W Titanium (200-240VAC/240HVDC), 2400W Titanium, 1800W Titanium, 1500W, 1400W -48VDC and 1100W/800W Titanium/Platinum options
• Worst-case builds with 2x 500W CPUs and 2x 450W GPUs need the 3200W pair – verify PDU current at 200-240V

Workload Profiles

Workload	Why the R7725
Data warehouse / eCommerce	192-core Zen5 per socket, 6400 MT/s DDR5 and 40x E3.S Gen5 NVMe sustain high concurrent scans and OLTP spikes
Databases (SQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL)	12 memory channels per CPU; CXL 2.0 Type 3 expansion for very large buffer pools
HPC and batch	Highest core-per-rack ratio in the 2U AMD line; 500W TDP CPUs with DLC option
AI inference with a 450W accelerator	2x 450W double-width GPU support in the same chassis as dual-socket compute

Deployment Notes

• Rack depth: 802.4 mm with bezel – verify rail depth in 1000mm cabinets; cable management arms optional.
• Cooling: confirm the air-cooling configuration table for 500W TDP CPUs; order DLC where the guide requires it.
• Firmware baseline: use the latest iDRAC10 firmware and Dell certified OS matrix before production cut-over.
• License note: VMware and RHEL licenses price per core – the 192-core ceiling demands a core-license budget conversation before, not after, procurement.

Ordering Checklist

• Backplane choice: 40x E3.S vs 16x 2.5-inch + 8x U.2 NVMe vs 24x 2.5-inch – each is a different SKU; confirm the bay plan before quoting.
• CPU SKU: specify core count (up to 192) and TDP class; 500W SKUs may require DLC – Dell’s configurator will flag it.
• Memory speed: 6400 MT/s requires 1 DPC class DIMMs; mixing ranks or 2 DPC drops to the platform’s supported speed.
• PSU pair: 3200W Titanium for GPU/large-NVMe builds, 1400W -48VDC for DC data centers; order matching pairs only.
• iDRAC entitlement: Enterprise tier for System Lockdown, telemetry and virtual media.
• Spares: one BOSS-N1 module, one 3200W PSU and one E3.S drive per cluster keeps MTTR in minutes.

Deployment Snapshot: Data Warehouse Refresh

A retailer replaced four R7625 nodes with two R7725s for its eCommerce data warehouse. Zen5 core count allowed the same workload on half the nodes, DDR5 6400 MT/s cut ETL job runtime by roughly a third, and the 40x E3.S Gen5 NVMe layout carried the fact tables at Gen5 bandwidth. After decommissioning the legacy nodes, rack power dropped from 7.6kW to 4.1kW and the warehouse query SLA improved – a pattern we see consistently on the 9005 migration.

With 192 Zen5 cores per socket, 6,400 MT/s DDR5 and up to forty E3.S Gen5 NVMe bays in a 25.1 kg 2U chassis, the R7725 is the density benchmark for the AMD line. Planning an AMD platform refresh? Contact us for a migration worksheet with core-to-memory ratios, NVMe layout and PSU sizing against your actual power rate.

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