DELL PowerEdge R740 2x Silver 4210R 10C 256GB 4x 480GB SATA SSD H730P rack server

2U rack server with dual Silver 4210R CPUs

The Dell EMC PowerEdge R740 is a 2U rack server fitted with two Intel Silver 4210R processors, each running at 2.4GHz with 10 cores and 13.75M cache. It ships with 256GB of DDR4 memory installed across 16 modules at 2666 MT/s. Storage is handled by an H730P RAID controller driving four 480GB SATA SSDs in the front 2.5-inch bays. The chassis provides eight drive bays in total and up to eight PCIe Gen 3 expansion slots for additional cards.

Upgrade from single-socket or smaller-memory systems

This configuration replaces single-socket servers or older dual-socket units that cannot reach 256GB of RAM or twenty total cores. The jump is worth it when workloads such as virtualisation hosts, database instances or compute clusters need more simultaneous threads and a larger memory footprint than a single processor or lower-capacity DIMMs can provide. The redundant 1100W power supplies and iDRAC9 Enterprise remote management also add operational resilience missing from entry-level platforms.

Limits of PCIe Gen 3 and SATA SSD throughput

The eight PCIe Gen 3 slots cap expansion bandwidth at Gen 3 speeds, so newer Gen 4 or Gen 5 accelerators, NICs or storage controllers will operate at reduced throughput. The four installed SATA SSDs are limited by the SATA interface, so sequential read and write performance cannot exceed that protocol ceiling. The eight 2.5-inch bays allow more drives, but the H730P controller and backplane determine the maximum aggregate bandwidth available to the array.