DELL PowerEdge R730 2U rack server 2x E5-2630v3 2.4GHz 32GB DDR4 H330

Rack server for dual-CPU workloads

The Dell PowerEdge R730 is a 2U rackmount server built around two Intel Xeon E5-2630v3 eight-core processors running at 2.4 GHz. It ships with 32 GB of DDR4 memory and a PERC H330 RAID controller supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, 10, 50 and 60. The system targets IT teams deploying virtualisation hosts, database nodes or general-purpose compute clusters in a standard rack. Buyers who need GPU acceleration or single-threaded frequency above 2.4 GHz should look elsewhere.

Installation notes and common issues

The chassis accepts up to eight 2.5-inch hot-plug SAS or SATA drives and includes a DVD-ROM drive. Two 750 W redundant power supplies are pre-installed, simplifying power cabling in a rack with dual PDUs. Seven PCIe 3.0 slots plus a dedicated PERC slot are available for expansion cards. The iDRAC8 Express remote-management module is enabled by default; Enterprise features and vFlash media require a licence upgrade. Installers sometimes forget to populate memory evenly across the 24 DIMM slots, which can limit achievable speeds.

Capacity and headroom limits

The installed 32 GB of DDR4 uses a fraction of the 24 slots, leaving room to scale toward the processor-supported maximum of 1536 GB when 128 GB modules are used. Storage capacity can reach 64 TB with eight large-capacity drives behind the H330 controller. Network connectivity starts at four 1 GbE ports on the daughter card; optional 10 GbE mezzanine cards add throughput for heavier east-west traffic. The Matrox G200 video output with 8 MB cache is sufficient for console management only.