Dell
Dell PowerEdge T440 Server 2x Gold 5118 96GB RAM 2x 400GB SSD
Dual 12-core Gold 5118 processors and 96GB ECC RAM give this renewed T440 tower the compute density to run production workloads without new-server pricing.
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Overview
Drive Your Business with a Reliable and Scalable Server Solution
The Dell PowerEdge T440 is a robust and versatile server designed to meet the demands of growing businesses. This renewed server offers high performance and scalability, ensuring your data and applications run smoothly and efficiently.
Key Features:
- Refurbished Quality: Professionally renewed to ensure reliable performance.
- Dual Processors: Equipped with 2x Intel Gold 5118 Twelve Core 2.3Ghz Processors.
- Generous Memory: Includes 96GB of RAM for smooth multitasking.
- Fast Storage: Features 2x 400GB 6Gbps SATA 2.5" SSD Drives for rapid data access.
- RAID Controller: H730 1GB 12Gbps RAID Controller for enhanced data management.
- Redundant Power: 2x 495W Redundant Power Supplies for increased reliability.
- Hot-Plug Bays: 8 x 3.5" Hot Plug bays for easy drive management.
Pros & Cons
👍 Pros
- Dual Intel Xeon Gold 5118 processors deliver 24 physical cores and 48 threads, providing meaningful multi-threaded compute headroom for virtualization and parallel workloads.
- 96GB ECC Registered RAM allows large in-memory datasets while hardware error correction actively protects data integrity — critical for database and enterprise application workloads.
- H730 RAID controller with 1GB of onboard cache and 12Gbps SAS support enables write-back caching performance gains and flexible array configurations across the 8 hot-plug bays.
- Dual 495W redundant hot-swap power supplies eliminate the PSU as a single point of failure — a production-grade reliability feature at this price point.
- 8x 3.5" hot-plug bays provide significant storage expansion capacity beyond the included SSDs without taking the server offline.
👎 Cons
- Intel Xeon Gold 5118 is a Skylake-SP architecture (launched 2017) — per-core performance and instructions-per-clock lag behind current-generation Xeon and EPYC processors by a meaningful margin for single-threaded workloads.
- 96GB RAM across a 24-DIMM platform likely means sub-optimal DIMM population (not all channels filled), which reduces memory bandwidth below the Gold 5118's theoretical maximum.
- The 2x 400GB SSD configuration provides limited raw storage for high-capacity workloads — organizations with large dataset requirements will need to budget for additional drives at purchase.
- As a renewed unit, iDRAC service tag history and full component provenance may be incomplete, complicating firmware update chains and Dell support entitlement.
- Tower form factor requires dedicated floor or rack shelf space; it does not fit a standard 1U or 2U rack slot without a separate conversion kit.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "renewed" mean for this T440, and what should I verify before deploying it?
Professionally renewed means the unit has been inspected, tested, and restored to working condition — but it is not equivalent to factory new. Before production deployment, verify iDRAC firmware version, confirm RAID controller battery health via the H730 management interface, and run Dell's built-in diagnostics (available at POST) to validate all 24 DIMM slots and both processors are reporting correctly.
Can I expand storage beyond the included 2x 400GB SSDs?
Yes. The T440 ships with 8x 3.5" hot-plug bays, of which only the 2.5" SSD caddies are populated in this configuration. You can add 3.5" SAS or SATA HDDs into the remaining bays — the H730 RAID controller supports up to 12Gbps SAS devices and can manage additional arrays independently of the existing SSD volumes.
What is the maximum RAM this server will support, and what's the upgrade path from 96GB?
The T440 supports up to 24 DIMM slots across two processor sockets, with a maximum of 1.5TB RAM using LRDIMMs. This unit ships with 96GB — likely 6x 16GB RDIMMs. Expanding requires matching DDR4 ECC Registered DIMMs at the correct speed for the Gold 5118's memory controller (up to DDR4-2666).
What virtualization workloads can the dual Gold 5118 configuration realistically handle?
Each Intel Xeon Gold 5118 is a 12-core/24-thread processor at 2.3GHz base with a 3.2GHz Turbo Boost. The combined 24 cores and 48 threads, paired with 96GB RAM, can support 15–25 mid-sized VMs under typical enterprise hypervisor loads (VMware ESXi, Hyper-V, Proxmox) — assuming VMs are allocated 2–4 vCPUs and 2–8GB RAM each.
Are the two 495W power supplies hot-swappable?
Yes. The T440's redundant PSU configuration supports hot-swap replacement — one supply can be removed and replaced while the server remains operational, provided the remaining PSU can carry the current load. This is a genuine operational advantage for environments where uptime SLAs prevent maintenance windows.
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