Dell PowerEdge R660xs Rack Server Review
March 31, 2025We have the 1U Dell PowerEdge R660xs Server, that little “xs” suffix does say something about this server when compared to the R660. We are going to get to the bottom of that. The R660xs is not the beast that the R660 is, which offers support for GPUs with a longer chassis length, plus an option for up to 16x EDSFF NVMe drives. Nope, just like Goldilocks’ porridge, the R660xs is sized just right for a number of very specific applications. In that regard, Dell recognizes that not every business needs the highest performance potential and might want to save a little money too.
The Dell PowerEdge R660xs is designed for lower power consumption and can use 5th or 4th generation Gold or Silver Intel Xeon Scalable processors to do just that.
You can still load in some NVMe drives in the PowerEdge R660xs Rack Server, but only 10x at 2.5-inch. No EDSFF NVMe drives are supported and no GPUs. It still offers dual CPUs and is designed to support the most “popular” workloads. Popular in this context almost makes it seem like the cool kid in high school. Not necessarily the football or basketball star but a great all-around performer that likes to socialize. For a multitude of tasks. Like scale-out database, high-performance computing, virtualization, and use in a public/private cloud.
The front of the system can be outfitted with Dells proprietary beehive honeycomb bezel. Either the optional security bezel or with integrated LCD screen. We have a standard bezel. There are slight differences between the 3.5-inch drive bay chassis and the 2.5-inch design, but both have a small control panel on the left with status LED indicators that include drives, temperature, electrical, memory, and PCIe indicators.
Next to that, a system health and system ID indicator, that as an option can be configured with an integrated Dell Remote Access Controller Quick Sync 2 indicator or iDRAC Quick Sync for short. Quick Sync is only available on certain configurations. When activated, administrators can use the OpenManage mobile app with a smart phone or tablet to manage the system, access inventory, troubleshoot the system, and address a host of other high-level management utilities.
On the right-hand side, another small control panel with the power ON button, a USB 2.0 port, and micro-AB USB iDRAC Direct port that allows you to connect a laptop or tablet. Where the chassis types somewhat diverge is the placement of a VGA port. It’s right next to the left of the right-hand control panel on the 2.5-inch bay chassis with 8x or 10x bays but above the 4th drive bay on the 3.5-inch drive bay chassis. It could be above the 3rd drive, it really depends on whether they start at zero.
Storage is flexible on this platform too with options for 0 drive bays, 4x 3.5-inch bays with SAS/SATA HDDs or SSDs (96TB max.), 8x 2.5-inch bays outfitted with SAS/SATA/NVMe drives (122TB max), or 10x 2.5-inch bays again that can be outfitted with SAS/SATA/NVMe drives (153.6TB max). That last configuration will provide up to 153.6TB of storage. We have the 10x bay version and NVMe backplane with two 960GB DC U.2 NVMe Gen4 Read-intensive drives up front. You can install all NVMe, all SAS, all SATA or go with combinations with 2-4 universal media bays supporting SAS/SATA/NVMe.
Getting around to the back of the chassis, optionally, you can install 2x more 2.5-inch SAS/SATA or NVMe drive bays for an additional 15.2TB of storage. That said, 30TB drives are now being offered on other Dell platforms so probably fair to say those capacity figures are already outdated.
Contrary to the split PSU configuration on the R660, the R660xs has both PSUs aligned on the right of the chassis where we have dual redundant 800W PSUs. This is because the R660 has a T-shaped motherboard to accommodate better cooling for those GPUs but also maybe for the Direct liquid Cooling option.
The R660xs has a more traditional motherboard.
There is also an additional lower wattage 600W Platinum rated PSU that has been added to the R660xs list. This provides an option for even lower power consumption. However, that is dependent on the configuration. Other that that, you still have the option to install an 1800W Titanium PSU. And various wattages in between.
Immediately adjacent to the PSUs is the system ID button with integrated LED, VGA port, OCP 3.0 compatible mezzanine card slot with those options again for network connection port and speeds. Beside that a USB 3.0 port with a 2.0 port on top. Then you have the dedicated RJ-45 management port to access iDRAC and then dual gigabit Ethernet ports, which can also be configured to access iDRAC.
Wedged in between the PCIe cover panels above is a removeable panel where a Boot Optimized Storage Subsystem card can be installed. Specifically, a BOSS-N! modular card. The BOSS-N1 can be outfitted with 1x or 2x NVMe M.2 devices with capacities of either 480GB or 960GB for OS or Hypervisor support.
To manage the Dell PowerEdge R660xs, Dell does have a few options. iDRAC 9.0 accessible from the optional Quick Sync OpenManage Blue tooth connection on the front panel. iDRAC direct from the right-hand side control panel, laptop not included. And the dedicated iDRAC port on the back of the system for remote management of the system using a standard browser interface. Also, iDRAC Restful API with Redfish. That would be for managing just this single server. OpenManage on the other hand will provide management for many servers by leveraging the information provided by iDRAC in each server. Open Manage will also provide integration with VMware vCenter, Microsoft Systems Center, Windows Admin Center, a few others.
Our system has dual Intel Xeon Silver 4410Y processors with 12x physical cores and 24x virtual threads each, for a total of 24 physical cores. With 8x memory module slots per processor, this system has half the memory module slots compared to the R660, which supports 32x memory module slots and no caps on CPU cores like on this system. Only 32 physical cores per 4th gen CPU or 28 cores per 5th gen CPU are supported. The standard R660 can support the full 64 physical core count offered by 5th generation Intel Xeon Scalable CPUs or 60 on 4th gen.
We have installed 4x 64GB Dual rank DDR5 4800MT/s RDIMM memory modules for up to 128GB of memory. We think our clients for this system may be planning an upgrade at some point because with all 16x slots outfitted with 64GB modules, that would provide the 1TB maximum memory compliment on this system. Whether they do that or not is unknowable. Memory speed will also tank at 4000MT/s as the Silver CPUs do not support higher memory speeds. That said, another reason for this platform is that Dell’s research indicated the vast majority of their customers don’t install more than 1TB of memory on their servers. Only 16x memory module slots is also another way of controlling cost. There are fewer memory pathways when you compare it to the R660 with 32x slots and a maximum capacity of 8TB.
Notice this Dell PowerEdge R660xs also has Gold fans instead of just the standard fans. Also, no DLC or Direct Liquid Cooling is offered on this system. Which is not to say you couldn’t probably install some from the parts listed for an R660 if you wanted to but motherboards are different and you might have a hard time with the modified PCIe slot for DLC. Anyways, no hardware PERC controller on this system either and no BOSS module.
Depending on how many CPUs are installed, you get either 2x PCIe slots, including one x16 PCIe 4.0 slot and one x8 PCIe 5.0 slot. With dual processors up to three PCIe 4.0 slots, one x16 and two x8 slots or you can get two PCIe 5.0 slots with one x16 and one x8. As GPUs are not supported on this chassis like on the R660 server without the xs, you have a choice of HD controllers or as Dell refers to them, PowerEdge RAID Controllers, PERCs, or you can install additional network interface controllers, or NICs.
Again, there are many options for the Dell PowerEdge R660xs server from, storage to networking to CPUs, memory, and many others. That said, Dell does make a definite effort to somewhat minimize configuration options for this particular platform to reduce cost and power consumption, which will also help reduce cost. If you are interested in purchasing one of these or learning more, visit our website here.
