Dell
Dell Intel Xeon PowerEdge T440 Gold 5118 Server (Renewed)
A 12-core Xeon Gold 5118 tower with dual-PSU redundancy and SSD storage delivers data-center reliability without the rack cabinet.
View price on Amazon
Affiliate Disclosure: Studio Supplies may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you. This helps support our editorial team.
Notice a mistake? Let Us Know
Overview
PowerEdge T440: Dependable Performance for Growing Businesses
The Dell PowerEdge T440 is a refurbished tower server designed to provide a balance of performance, capacity, and scalability. Equipped with an Intel Xeon Gold processor, ample memory, and fast SSD storage, this server is well-suited for small to medium-sized businesses needing a reliable and efficient solution.
Specifications:
- Form Factor: Tower
- Hard Drive Bays: 8 x 3.5" Hot Plug
- Processors: Gold 5118 2X Trays Twelve Core 2.3Ghz
- RAM: 32GB
- Storage: 2X 400GB SSD
- RAID Controller: H730
- Power Supply: 2X PSU
Pros & Cons
👍 Pros
- Gold 5118's 6-channel memory architecture per socket delivers higher memory bandwidth than Silver-tier Xeons, reducing bottlenecks in memory-bound database and analytics workloads.
- 2x 400GB SSDs on the H730 RAID controller provide sub-millisecond storage latency with hardware-level RAID 1 redundancy, eliminating the performance penalty of software RAID.
- Dual redundant power supplies protect against single-PSU failure — an enterprise feature that extends availability without requiring an external UPS to cover internal PSU faults.
- Tower form factor eliminates rack infrastructure costs, making this deployable directly in a server closet, SMB office, or remote branch location.
- 6 of 8 hot-swap bays remain empty, leaving substantial room for storage expansion without downtime or chassis replacement.
👎 Cons
- 32GB DDR4 is thin for a dual-socket Gold platform — with 12 DIMM slots available, this configuration runs far below the T440's memory bandwidth potential and will require upgrades for VM-dense or in-memory database workloads.
- Dual 400GB SSDs in RAID 1 yields just 400GB usable — adequate for an OS and application tier, but workloads with large datasets will immediately require additional spinning storage in the remaining bays.
- Tower form factor cannot be rack-mounted without a third-party tower-to-rack conversion kit, limiting deployment flexibility in existing rack environments.
- As a renewed unit, BIOS/iDRAC firmware may not be at current revision — plan for a firmware update cycle before production deployment.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does the Gold 5118 processor offer over Silver-tier Xeons?
The Gold 5118 is a 12-core, 24-thread chip clocked at 2.3 GHz base with a 3.2 GHz turbo and a 105W TDP. Compared to Silver-tier Xeons, it supports more memory channels (6 per socket vs. 4 on entry Silver), higher memory bandwidth, and full AVX-512 instruction support — relevant for numerical computing, compression, and cryptographic workloads. With two processor trays populated, the T440 supports 24 cores and 48 threads.
The listing shows "2X Trays" — does that mean both processor sockets are populated?
"2X Trays" indicates both CPU tray slots are present in the chassis but does not confirm both are populated with processors. Verify with the seller whether one or both Gold 5118 CPUs are installed before purchasing, as a single-socket configuration halves available cores and memory bandwidth.
How does 2x 400GB SSD on the H730 controller perform for database workloads?
The H730 supports RAID 1 across the two SSDs, providing a 400GB mirrored volume with full redundancy and the controller's 1GB non-volatile write cache. For transactional database workloads, the SSD latency advantage over spinning SAS is significant — expect sub-1ms average read latency versus 5–8ms on 10K HDD. The limiting factor becomes the H730's SAS 12Gbps bus, not the SSDs themselves.
Is the tower form factor a limitation for future expansion?
The T440 supports up to 8x 3.5-inch hot-plug bays, with only 2 of 8 bays consumed by the shipped SSDs. That leaves 6 bays available for additional NL-SAS or SAS drives. Tower form factor is a ceiling for dense rack deployments but is not a constraint for a standalone server in an office or equipment closet.
What does dual redundant power supply mean practically?
With two PSUs installed and connected to separate power circuits, the T440 can survive a single PSU failure or a single circuit outage without downtime. This is a feature found on enterprise-class hardware; most workstation-class tower servers ship with a single, non-redundant PSU.
Related Products
