DELL PowerEdge R540 2U 8-Bay 2x Xeon Gold 5118 2.3GHz 12C 32GB DDR4 H730P iDRAC9 Ent 2x750W

DELL PowerEdge R540 2U 8-Bay Server

The DELL PowerEdge R540 is a 2U rack server built for virtualization, database hosting, and file or application workloads. It ships with two Intel Xeon Gold 5118 processors, each running 12 cores at 2.3 GHz with a 3.2 GHz turbo frequency. The system includes 32 GB of DDR4 2666 MHz registered ECC memory across four modules and a PERC H730P RAID controller with 2 GB cache supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50, and 60.

Suits virtualization and storage-heavy roles

This configuration fits IT teams deploying hypervisors or business-critical applications that benefit from dual-socket compute and flexible 3.5-inch drive bays. The eight hot-swap trays accept SATA or SAS drives, and redundant 750 W platinum power supplies provide resilience. Buyers who require installed drives, GPU acceleration, or a smaller 1U form factor should evaluate other options.

Eight 3.5-inch SAS/SATA hot-swap bays

The chassis provides eight front-accessible trays for 3.5-inch drives with no drives included. The PERC H730P controller manages SAS and SATA devices at 12 Gb/s and includes a battery-backed cache. Maximum memory capacity reaches 384 GB across 16 DIMM slots, and iDRAC9 Enterprise enables full remote management.