Dell
Dell PowerEdge R740 2X Silver 4110 1.5TB RAM 2X 400GB SSD Server (Renewed)
Dual Xeon Silver muscle meets 1.5TB of RAM in this enterprise-grade 2U server built to run virtualization and database workloads at scale.
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Overview
Reliable Performance for Demanding Workloads
The Dell PowerEdge R740 is a robust server designed for enterprise-level performance. Featuring dual Intel Xeon Silver processors, massive memory, and fast SSD storage, this renewed server is ready for your most demanding applications.
Specifications:
- Brand: Dell
- Model: PowerEdge R740
- Processor: 2x Intel Xeon Silver 4110 Eight Core 2.1Ghz
- Memory: 1536GB RAM
- Storage: 2x 400GB SSD
- Drive Bays: 8 x 2.5 Hot Plug
- RAID Controller: H730P
- Condition: Renewed
Pros & Cons
👍 Pros
- 1.5TB of RAM enables extreme VM density — 30–50 VMs without memory contention on a single host.
- Dual Xeon Silver 4110 processors deliver 16 cores and 32 threads at 2.1GHz base with AVX-512 support for compute-intensive workloads.
- H730P RAID controller with 2GB NVCACHE significantly reduces write latency for database and transactional applications.
- 8x 2.5" hot-plug drive bays allow live storage expansion without server downtime.
- 2U rack form factor maximizes density in standard 42U racks — two nodes per 4U.
👎 Cons
- Xeon Silver 4110 is a Skylake-SP (2017) architecture — no PCIe 4.0 support, limiting NVMe expansion throughput compared to current-gen servers.
- 2x 400GB SSDs provide limited raw storage for data-heavy workloads; additional drives and licensing for the H730P may be required.
- 65W TDP per processor keeps power draw manageable, but a fully loaded 1.5TB RAM configuration still demands robust PDU capacity and cooling.
- No GPU slots configured in this SKU — not suited for ML inference or CUDA workloads without significant reconfiguration.
Frequently Asked Questions
What virtualization workloads can this server realistically handle?
With 1,536GB of RAM across dual 8-core Xeon Silver 4110 processors (16 physical cores, 32 threads total), this machine can host dozens of concurrent VMs. A mid-sized VMware or Hyper-V cluster running 30–50 VMs with 16–32GB each is well within range — RAM is the usual ceiling for VM density, and 1.5TB removes that ceiling entirely.
How fast is the storage subsystem and is 2x 400GB SSD enough for production use?
The two 400GB SSDs are likely SAS or SATA enterprise drives connected through the H730P RAID controller, which supports RAID 0/1/5/6/10 and delivers up to 2GB/s of throughput. For OS and application tier, 800GB total (RAID 1) is workable, but most deployments will want to add additional drives to the 8x 2.5" hot-plug bays for data storage.
What does "Renewed" mean for a server at this price point?
Renewed means the unit has been refurbished — typically inspected, cleaned, reseated components, and tested under load. Dell-certified refurbs go through more rigorous validation than third-party refurbs. Check the seller's warranty terms; most renewed enterprise servers ship with a 30–90 day guarantee.
Can I expand the memory beyond 1.5TB?
The R740 supports up to 3TB of RAM across 24 DIMM slots using LRDIMMs. The current 1,536GB (1.5TB) configuration already uses high-density LRDIMMs. To go higher, you'd need to upgrade to 128GB modules — expensive but technically possible.
Is the H730P RAID controller suitable for database workloads?
Yes. The H730P includes a 2GB non-volatile write cache (NVCACHE), which significantly improves write latency for transactional database engines like SQL Server or MySQL. It supports RAID 5/6 for capacity-optimized deployments and RAID 10 for write-heavy OLTP scenarios.
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