HPE NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 by HPE vs Lenovo Lenovo NVIDIA GB300 NVL72
Both are built on the NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 baseboard, so their accelerator performance is identical rather than merely similar. The choice between them is chassis, cooling, expansion and supplier, not FLOPS.
What actually differs
| Specification | HPE NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 by HPE | Lenovo Lenovo NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | HPE | Lenovo |
| Part number | S6C60A | 7DJVCTO2WW |
| Form factor | rack | rack |
| Released | — | — |
| Accelerator | 72x GB300 | 72x GB300 |
| Aggregate memory | — | — |
| Aggregate bandwidth | — | — |
| System power | 132.0 kW | 135.0 kW |
| Interconnect | Fifth-generation NVLink across all 72 GPUs through nine NVLink switch trays; each compute tray carries two ConnectX-8 ports at 800 Gbps and one BlueField-3 DPU, with two Spectrum SN2201 top-of-rack switches for management | Fifth-generation NVLink across all 72 GPUs through nine switch trays, joined by a rear cable cartridge backplane; the NVLink domain is contained within one rack, with no inter-rack scaling, and each compute tray adds up to three PCIe Gen 5 x16 slots for networking |
Rows shown in grey are identical between the two.
HPE NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 by HPE
HPE's build of NVIDIA's GB300 NVL72, a 48U rack holding 36 Grace processors and 72 Blackwell Ultra GPUs across eighteen compute trays, each tray carrying two Grace CPUs and four GPUs on two GB300 boards. Nine NVLink switch trays tie the 72 GPUs into one domain over fifth-generation NVLink, and each tray adds two ConnectX-8 ports at 800 Gbps and a BlueField-3 DPU. Power comes from eight 33 kW shelves onto a 50 V DC busbar, each shelf built from six 5.5 kW supplies. HPE is unusually precise about what the rack actually draws: 132 kW nominal thermal design power, around 155 kW electrical design power at peak, and a recommendation that data centres provision busways for 192 kW. The figure shown here is the 132 kW nominal. Cooling is direct liquid to cold plates on both CPUs and GPUs, fed by an in-row CDU rated at 1.3 MW that can serve up to eight racks. The rack measures 2495 by 600 by 1068 mm and weighs about 3,300 lb fully loaded. HPE publishes no accelerator memory total and no throughput figure; the only memory it states is 512 GB of LPDDR5X per Grace CPU, which is host memory rather than HBM.
Vendor product pageLenovo Lenovo NVIDIA GB300 NVL72
Lenovo's build of NVIDIA's GB300 NVL72, a 48U MGX rack holding 72 Blackwell Ultra GPUs and 36 Grace CPUs across eighteen 1U compute trays, with nine switch trays and either six or eight power shelves joined by a rear cable cartridge backplane. Two rack base options exist, C5RK with non-redundant power and six shelves and C5RJ with redundant power and eight; they differ only in power, not in compute. Cooling is deliberately hybrid rather than fully liquid: CPUs, GPUs and the NVSwitches are liquid cooled while the OSFP modules, drives and power distribution board are air cooled, which Lenovo puts at roughly 90 percent of rack heat captured to liquid and 10 percent to air, and which lets the whole thing drop into a standard 19 inch cabinet. Each rack consumes 135 kW of thermal design power, rising to about 155 kW at peak depending on workload. Each compute tray carries two Grace processors of 72 Arm Neoverse V2 cores with up to 960 GB of LPDDR5x between them, up to eight E1.S NVMe drives and an M.2 boot device. Lenovo publishes no accelerator memory total and no throughput figure; the memory it does state is the Grace side rather than HBM.
Vendor product page