The R740 8-Bay 2.5" is the compute-first variant of the 14th gen 2U Dell PowerEdge family. Eight 2.5" hot-swap front bays on a direct-attach SAS/SATA backplane (no SAS expander), dual 1st or 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable processors, 24 DDR4 DIMM slots, the full Network Daughter Card mezzanine, and up to 8 PCIe Gen3 expansion slots in the 2U envelope. This is the chassis we recommend when the workload is CPU and memory dense, when local storage is not the primary tier (data lives on a SAN, NAS, or external array), and when slightly more thermal and PCIe headroom for top-bin CPUs or GPU configurations matters more than maximum bay count.

The 8-Bay's eight-front-bay design is not a feature loss vs the 16-Bay. It is the design point. The reduced bay count maps to a simpler direct-attach backplane (no SAS expander in the cabling or firmware path) and frees power and thermal margin for the CPU and PCIe envelope. For SQL Server consolidation, application-tier servers in front of shared storage, mid-density Hyper-V or vSphere clusters with SAN-backed VM storage, and 2U GPU builds where the storage tier is centralized, this is the chassis we reach for. For higher bay counts the 16-Bay 2.5" is the right call; for bulk LFF capacity the 8-Bay 3.5" is the LFF answer.

To configure a build, call 1-800-778-1545 or use the quote form below. Every refurbished unit ships under our 180-day warranty with 12+ hour burn-in testing, and volume pricing starts at 5 units.

When 8-Bay 2.5" Is the Right Choice

The 8-Bay chassis earns its place when one of these design patterns applies: SQL Server or Oracle consolidation where per-core licensing economics drive CPU spec and bay count is a secondary concern, application-tier and middleware servers in front of centralized storage where local capacity is the OS plus application binaries only, mid-density VMware or Hyper-V hosts with primary VM storage on an external SAN or NAS, dev/test environments where the chassis cost delta matters and bay growth is bounded, and 2U GPU builds where the PCIe slot budget and thermal envelope matter more than drive count.

What does not belong on this chassis: workloads needing more than 8 local drives across their lifetime (the 16-Bay 2.5" is the right call, bay configuration is welded into the chassis and cannot be field-upgraded), vSAN OSA at production scale where the textbook 16-drive disk-group geometry is the better fit, bulk LFF capacity (the 8-Bay 3.5" or the R740xd 12-Bay 3.5" are the LFF answers), and native NVMe storage (no R740 chassis supports front NVMe; the R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" NVMe variant is the family's NVMe specialist). We will tell you directly at quote time when a different chassis is the better answer.

Storage - 8 2.5" Bays (SAS/SATA, Direct-Attach)

Eight 2.5" hot-swap front bays on a direct-attach SAS/SATA backplane with two internal connectors back to the controller. No SAS expander in the data path, which means simpler cabling and no expander firmware in the troubleshooting chain when something goes wrong. The backplane supports the full range of SAS and SATA drives in any combination. Common storage profiles we quote on this chassis:

• SAS SSDs for production data: High endurance, dual-port connectivity, the right call for any database or transactional workload running on local storage. Eight SAS SSDs in RAID 10 or RAID 6 is a clean SQL Server or Oracle local-storage footprint.
• Mixed SAS SSD plus SAS HDD: Cost-effective tiered storage where SSDs carry hot data and 10K SAS HDDs carry warm or cold data. Appropriate for application servers where the working set is small but archived data lives alongside.
• All-SATA SSD for application volumes: Good balance of performance and cost for read-dominant application workloads where SAS premium is not justified.
• Minimal local storage with BOSS: The most common configuration on this chassis is actually fewer than eight drives populated. A SAN-backed virtualization host typically runs BOSS for ESXi boot and two or four SAS SSDs for a local datastore or scratch, leaving the remaining bays unpopulated. The 8-Bay is right-sized for that use case in a way the 16-Bay is not.

NVMe note: The R740 8-Bay 2.5" backplane is SAS/SATA only. There is no native front NVMe option on this chassis (this applies across the entire R740 chassis lineup, not just the 8-Bay). NVMe is possible via PCIe expansion cards in the rear slots, but if NVMe is the primary storage tier the R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" NVMe variant is the right chassis.

Boot drive recommendation - BOSS module: Dell's Boot Optimized Storage Subsystem is a hardware-RAID 1 pair of M.2 SATA SSDs on a dedicated PCIe card. We recommend it as the standard boot device on every R740 production build. On the 8-Bay specifically, BOSS matters more than on the 16-Bay: with only eight front bays, dedicating one or two to OS boot is an expensive trade. BOSS keeps the OS off the front bays and preserves all eight for data or scratch.

Storage Controllers

Same Dell PERC controller family as the rest of the R740 lineup. On an 8-bay chassis the controller choice is slightly less load-bearing than on the 16-bay because the drive count is lower and the failure-domain is smaller, but the workload profile still drives the right choice:

• PERC H740P (8 GB NV cache, battery-backed): Production storage default for write-intensive or transactional workloads where local storage matters. The 8 GB non-volatile cache with battery backup delivers the best write latency and protects cached data through power events. Essential for SQL Server or Oracle on local SAS SSD.
• PERC H730P (2 GB cache, battery-backed): The most common controller spec on this chassis. The 2 GB cache is appropriately sized for an 8-drive array on mixed or read-heavy workloads, and the price delta vs the H740P matters when local storage is a secondary concern behind centralized SAN or NAS.
• PERC H730 (1 GB cache, battery-backed): The 13th-gen-era controller that Dell maintained Mini-PERC slot compatibility for on 14th gen. It works in this chassis and appears frequently on refurbished R740 units as a carryover from prior deployments. Viable but generally a downgrade vs the H730P or H740P on Cascade Lake workloads. Quote when budget is the constraint and write performance is not load-bearing; otherwise the H730P is a small step up for a meaningful cache size increase.
• PERC H330 (no cache): Entry-tier hardware RAID for light workloads where write performance is not a primary concern.
• HBA330 (pass-through HBA): For software-defined storage stacks (vSAN, Storage Spaces Direct, Ceph). Pass-through to the OS without hardware RAID abstraction. Less common on the 8-Bay than on the 16-Bay because the SDS workloads that justify HBA pass-through usually want more drives in the disk-group geometry.
• S140 (software RAID via chipset): Dev/test and light workloads only. Not a production storage recommendation.

The controller mounts in a dedicated Mini-PERC slot, not a general PCIe slot, so the full PCIe slot count remains available for networking, HBAs, or GPUs regardless of controller selection.

Processors

CPU options: Dual 1st Generation Intel Xeon Scalable (Skylake-SP, 2017) or 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable (Cascade Lake-SP, 2019), socket LGA 3647 on the Intel C620-series (Lewisburg) chipset. Skylake and Cascade Lake are drop-in compatible on the same R740 motherboard. Up to 28 cores per CPU for a maximum 56 cores and 112 threads dual-socket. TDP range 85W (Bronze 3104) through 205W (Platinum 8280).

Our SKU recommendations on this chassis: The 8-Bay's compute-first positioning makes CPU selection load-bearing. For SQL Server consolidation, Gold 6248 (20 cores, 2.5 GHz base, 150W TDP) is the workhorse pick where per-core licensing economics favor the higher clock. For Oracle on the same chassis pattern, Gold 6244 (8 cores, 3.6 GHz base, 150W) is the per-core-licensed-database specialist where peak clock beats core count for licensing math. For mid-density VMware or Hyper-V with SAN-backed storage, Gold 6230 (20 cores, 2.1 GHz, 125W) is the balanced default. For top-bin compute (HPC, dense consolidation, GPU host with high CPU-side preprocessing), Gold 6248R (24 cores, 3.0 GHz, 205W) and Platinum 8280 (28 cores, 205W) deliver the peak; the 2U chassis has the thermal envelope to handle these SKUs cleanly, and the 8-Bay's reduced drive heat load gives slightly more headroom than the 16-Bay on these top-bin builds.

Heatsink requirement on top-bin CPUs: Any CPU above 150W TDP, including the 165W Gold 6146 / 6144 / 6244 / 6246 and the 205W Gold 6248R / 6258R / Platinum 8280, requires Dell's high-performance heatsink kit and high-performance fan kit. The standard heatsink will boot the system but throttle under sustained load. We specify this correctly on every high-TDP build; it is the most common configuration error we see on self-built R740 systems and the one most likely to result in a "the server runs fine for the first hour and then performance falls off a cliff" support call.

Single-socket warning: A single-CPU R740 build is supported but cuts the platform in half. With one CPU populated only 12 of the 24 DIMM slots are accessible, half the PCIe lanes are inactive, the NDC routes through the populated CPU, and several PCIe slots become unavailable depending on riser configuration. Single-socket is a real option for development, lab, and lightly-used edge nodes, but it is not a cost-saving move for production. For SQL Server or Oracle on this chassis, dual-socket is the only configuration that makes per-core licensing math work cleanly.

Memory

Architecture: 24 DDR4 DIMM slots organized as 12 slots per CPU across 6 memory channels at 2 DIMMs per channel. The 6-channel layout is the Purley platform's defining memory feature. Full population at 2 DPC consistently outperforms partial population at higher clock on memory-bandwidth-sensitive workloads, which describes most of the compute-first workloads that justify this chassis (SQL Server, in-memory caching, virtualization with high VM density).

Supported DIMM types:

• RDIMM (registered): Standard enterprise choice. Up to 64 GB per DIMM, 1.5 TB total at full population. Best price per gigabyte up to the 1.5 TB ceiling.
• LRDIMM (load-reduced): Up to 128 GB per DIMM, 3 TB total. The path past 1.5 TB without Optane. Common on high-density VDI builds and SQL Server consolidation hosts where 3 TB of host memory backs many concurrent VMs or large in-memory working sets.
• Intel Optane Persistent Memory (PMem): Cascade Lake L-series CPUs only (Gold 5215L, 6240L, 6248L, etc.). App Direct mode for persistent storage tier, Memory Mode for transparent capacity expansion. Up to 7.68 TB combined with LRDIMM. On a compute-first chassis the Memory Mode use case (transparent expansion of the host memory pool for high-VM-density workloads at lower cost per GB than LRDIMM) is the more common scenario.
• NVDIMM-N: Niche persistent memory option, paired with RDIMM only, up to 12 modules at 16 GB each for 192 GB total. Rarely the right answer in 2026; Optane is the more common path on this platform.

Memory speed by population: DDR4-2933 on Cascade Lake Gold 6200 / 5222 SKUs at 1 DPC, DDR4-2666 on other Cascade Lake SKUs and at full 2 DPC population, DDR4-2666 on all Skylake SKUs. Full 24-DIMM population at 2 DPC drops effective speed to 2666 from the 2933 peak even on Gold 6200 / 5222 CPUs. The full-channel bandwidth advantage over partial population is measurable under virtualization and consolidation load and consistently worth the speed-step tradeoff. Partial population (for example, only 6 DIMMs per CPU at 1 DPC) leaves six channels idle and is the most common memory configuration mistake on R740 deployments.

Mixing rules: Match ranks, capacity, and timing within a channel. We do not quote mixed configurations for production builds; matched-set DIMMs avoid subtle stability issues and make later memory expansion straightforward.

Networking and PCIe Expansion

Network Daughter Card (NDC): Dell's NDC mezzanine handles primary networking and does not consume any PCIe slot. NDC options:

• 4x 1 GbE: Entry-tier. Not recommended for primary enterprise production traffic on a compute-first 2U.
• 2x 10 GbE SFP+ plus 2x 1 GbE: The baseline for most compute-first builds on this chassis. 10 GbE for production traffic, 1 GbE ports available for management or backup networks.
• 4x 10 GbE SFP+: For converged storage and management traffic, or for separated networks (production, vMotion, backup, management) on virtualization hosts. The common pick for SAN-attached VMware or Hyper-V hosts.
• 2x 25 GbE SFP28: The right NDC for SAN-attached hosts where storage I/O competes with application traffic on shared links, and for hosts pulling from centralized all-flash NVMe-oF or iSCSI arrays. 25 GbE is appropriate when the bottleneck moves from local storage to centralized.

PCIe expansion: Up to 8 PCIe Gen3 slots with both CPUs populated, depending on riser configuration. The 8-Bay 2.5" chassis preserves the full PCIe slot budget structurally (no SAS expander, no rear drive assembly, no riser constraint from storage cabling). Common PCIe builds on this chassis: dual 25 GbE NIC plus dual Fibre Channel HBA for SAN attachment plus a low-profile GPU for inference, or quad 10 GbE NIC plus multi-T4 GPU for VDI clusters, or full PCIe budget allocated to GPU compute when the chassis is functioning as a 2U GPU host with SAN-backed storage.

The 8-Bay's reduced storage cabling and slightly more available power budget gives it a small but real advantage over the 16-Bay on builds where the PCIe envelope is fully populated with high-power cards.

GPU Support

The R740 2U envelope supports up to 3 double-width 300W GPUs (V100 PCIe, A30, T4 in double-wide form factor), up to 6 single-width 150W GPUs (T4 standard, P4, M10), or up to 4 single-width FPGAs / 3 double-width FPGAs. The 8-Bay 2.5" specifically benefits from slightly more available power and thermal margin than the 16-Bay because the reduced drive count lowers baseline draw and reduces front-of-chassis heat output. On builds with multi-GPU configurations or top-bin CPU plus GPU combinations, the 8-Bay is the chassis we reach for in the R740 family.

The honest framing for 2026: Even with the slot count and the 8-Bay's slight thermal advantage, the R740 is not the platform we would recommend for serious multi-GPU AI work. Three reasons. First, the PCIe Gen3 ceiling bottlenecks modern GPUs: a current-gen H100 or L40S is throttled to roughly half its host bandwidth on Gen3 lanes vs a Gen4 or Gen5 platform. Second, Cascade Lake's age means CPU-side preprocessing, data loading, and PCIe coherency overheads are dated relative to what current ML frameworks expect. Third, sustained-load thermal headroom is finite even on the 8-Bay. The R740 8-Bay is well-suited for VDI with vGPU (T4-class cards for user sessions, where 3-T4 builds are validated on this chassis where the 16-Bay's thermal tables are tighter), video transcoding, CAD or visualization clusters, and modest inference workloads where Gen3 bandwidth is acceptable.

GPU-equipped configurations require an enablement kit (auxiliary power cables, GPU brackets, riser-specific cabling). We add the kit to every R740 GPU build by default. The thermal restriction tables in the R740 Technical Guide govern the specific GPU plus CPU combinations validated for the 8-Bay; we work through that table at quote time on any borderline build.

Management - iDRAC9 Generation

iDRAC9 Enterprise: Required for production deployment. Remote KVM, virtual media, predictive analytics, Group Manager for fleet-scale operations, Quick Sync 2 wireless management, and Silicon Root of Trust. iDRAC9 Express is not suitable for unattended datacenter deployment because the remote console functionality is restricted to local console access only.

Security baseline: Silicon Root of Trust anchors firmware verification in immutable silicon (the Dell equivalent of HPE iLO 5's hardware-anchored trust chain). System Lockdown mode prevents unauthorized firmware changes after deployment. Cryptographically signed firmware updates and Secure Boot are standard. TPM 2.0 module supported and recommended for any deployment with NIST 800-171, CMMC, FedRAMP, HIPAA, or PCI DSS compliance framework requirements.

Lifecycle Controller: Bundled with iDRAC9. Provides BIOS and firmware update orchestration, hardware inventory reporting, and OS deployment via integrated drivers. Worth taking the time to learn on first deployment; it saves real time at every subsequent firmware refresh.

OpenManage Enterprise: The Dell fleet management plane. Integrates with iDRAC9 and Lifecycle Controller across the fleet for centralized firmware compliance, configuration drift detection, and warranty status tracking. Worth the integration effort on any fleet over 20 R740 units.

Power and Cooling

The 8-Bay's reduced drive count yields slightly lower baseline power draw and slightly better thermal headroom vs the 16-Bay. PSU recommendations specific to this chassis:

• Light (Silver CPUs, partial RAM, 4 SSDs, no GPU): 2x 495W Platinum, peak draw approximately 250W
• Balanced (Gold 6230, full RAM, 8 SAS SSDs, no GPU): 2x 750W Platinum, peak draw approximately 440W
• SQL Server consolidation (Gold 6248, 768 GB LRDIMM, 8 SAS SSDs): 2x 750W Platinum or 2x 1100W Platinum, peak draw approximately 530W
• Heavy (Gold 6248R, full RAM, 8 SSDs, single T4 GPU): 2x 1100W Platinum, peak draw approximately 700W
• Multi-GPU (Gold 6248R, full RAM, minimal storage, 3x double-width 300W GPUs): 2x 1600W Platinum or 2x 2000W Platinum for headroom

Hot-swap redundant Dell Flex Slot PSUs in 495W Platinum, 750W Platinum, 750W Titanium, 1100W Platinum, 1600W Platinum, 2000W Platinum, and 2400W Platinum. The 2000W and 2400W tiers are specific to the R740 2U platform and exist primarily for multi-GPU configurations. Always spec redundant.

On efficiency tier: 750W Titanium-rated PSUs are worth the modest premium for large multi-unit deployments. Efficiency savings at scale add up quickly, and a PSU running at 50 percent capacity runs cooler and lasts longer than one running at 90 percent. When in doubt on sizing, size up.

Thermal: Six hot-plug redundant fans standard. The 8-Bay's reduced drive count lowers front-of-chassis heat output vs the 16-Bay, which translates to slightly more thermal margin on top-bin CPU and multi-GPU configurations. ASHRAE A3 (40C) extended ambient support with the high-performance fan kit on most configurations, and the operating margin on this chassis is more generous than on the 16-Bay under identical CPU and memory loads.

Physical Specs & Platform Notes

• Form factor: 2U rack server. Approximately 86.8mm H x 482mm W x 715mm D with bezel and standard cable management. Fits standard 1000mm-depth datacenter cabinets with cable management arm. Standard 19-inch rack mount with Dell ReadyRails II.
• PCIe expansion: Up to 8 PCIe Gen3 slots with both CPUs populated, depending on riser configuration. The 8-Bay 2.5" preserves the full riser budget structurally; the reduced storage cabling complexity means no slots are consumed by SAS expander connections. Riser configuration is locked at order time and not field-swappable without chassis disassembly; we confirm the right riser against your PCIe card list at quote time.
• Parts availability: Excellent. The R740 is one of the highest-volume Dell PowerEdge platforms ever shipped. The 8-Bay 2.5" backplane is one of the most common variants. PERC controllers, NDC cards, riser kits, backplanes, fan modules, and PSUs are all readily available in the secondary market, and Dell ProSupport parts coverage remains active on most R740 service contracts in 2026.
• Accessories we recommend: Dell LCD bezel for the R740 2U chassis (confirm part number at quote time against your chassis revision and whether security bezel is required), Dell ReadyRails II static or sliding rails, and the Dell cable management arm. The CMA is genuinely worth the cost on production deployments; rear-of-rack service on a fully-cabled 2U is meaningfully easier with it installed.
• Platform notes: CPU hot-plug is not supported (system must be powered down for CPU replacement). NDC swap requires powered-down access. Bay configuration is welded into the chassis: an 8-Bay R740 cannot be field-upgraded to a 16-Bay R740 because the drive cage is part of the physical chassis; if you anticipate growth past 8 bays, buy the 16-Bay now. BIOS NVMe bifurcation settings must be configured correctly if NVMe expansion cards are added to the rear PCIe slots. Thermal restriction tables in the R740 Technical Guide govern any top-bin CPU plus multi-GPU deployment; the 8-Bay's tables are slightly more permissive than the 16-Bay's under the same CPU and GPU combination.

Our Assessment

Where it excels: SQL Server and Oracle consolidation hosts where per-core licensing drives CPU spec and 8 bays of local SAS SSD is the right storage footprint. Application-tier and middleware servers in front of centralized SAN, NAS, or object storage where local capacity is the OS plus binaries only. Mid-density vSphere or Hyper-V hosts with primary VM storage on an external array. 2U GPU builds where the slightly better thermal margin vs the 16-Bay matters for top-bin CPU plus multi-GPU combinations. VDI clusters where T4-class vGPU acceleration is the design point and shared storage carries the user profiles. Dev/test environments where the chassis cost delta vs 16-Bay materially affects the budget and bay growth is bounded.

Where to look instead: If you need more than 8 bays of local storage, the R740 16-Bay 2.5" is the right call. Bay configuration is welded into the chassis and cannot be field-upgraded; buy the right bay count up front. If you need vSAN OSA at production scale, the 16-Bay disk-group geometry is the textbook config. If your storage tier is bulk LFF capacity, the R740 8-Bay 3.5" is the LFF answer in the same chassis, or the R740xd 12-Bay 3.5" for higher LFF counts. If your storage architecture is NVMe-first, the R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" NVMe variant is the right chassis. If your workload needs serious multi-GPU AI compute or PCIe Gen4 bandwidth, step up to the R750 (15th gen) or R760 (16th gen). If 1U is a hard rack-density constraint, the R640 8-Bay 2.5" is the 1U companion with the same compute-first positioning.

Bottom line: The 8-Bay 2.5" is the R740 we recommend for compute-first builds where local storage is not the design constraint. A senior IT technician building a 14th gen Dell 2U for SQL Server consolidation, application-tier serving in front of a SAN, mid-density virtualization with shared storage, or a 2U GPU host lands on this chassis when bay count is not the constraint and the workload either benefits from the simpler cabling, the slight thermal advantage on top-bin CPU plus GPU, or the lower chassis cost delta vs the 16-Bay. The other R740 variants exist because there are real workloads where more drives or LFF capacity is the better answer, but for "compute density in 2U with storage handled elsewhere," this is the build.

Where the R740 Fits in 2026

The R740 family is 2 to 3 generations behind current Dell production (R750 15th gen / R760 16th gen). The 16-Bay 2.5" page covers the generational ladder, support status, and the full Dell ProSupport vs third-party maintenance picture in 2026. 8-Bay-specifically: this chassis variant carries forward into the R750 and R760 with the same compute-first design point, so the migration path is straightforward when the workload eventually justifies the platform refresh. For 2026 procurement, the 8-Bay 2.5" earns its place when 14th gen fleet standardization, budget, or vendor certification keeps the workload on R740 hardware. The price delta vs R750 or R760 (typically $2,000 to $4,500 per unit on the secondary market for comparable configurations) materially changes the deployment math on SQL Server consolidation fleets and VDI clusters where the per-unit cost compounds across the deployment.

Honest Limitations

• Bay configuration is welded into the chassis. An 8-Bay R740 cannot be field-upgraded to a 16-Bay R740 by adding a backplane; the drive cage is part of the physical chassis. If you anticipate growth past 8 bays, buy the 16-Bay now. This is the single most consequential procurement consideration on the 8-Bay.
• SAS/SATA backplane only, no front NVMe. The R740 chassis family does not support front NVMe on any variant, including this one. For NVMe-first storage, the R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" NVMe variant is the right chassis.
• 8 bays caps software-defined storage geometry. vSAN OSA technically supports 8-disk hosts but the textbook config is more disks per host for cache plus capacity tier balance. For SDS at production scale, the 16-Bay is the right chassis.
• PCIe Gen3 ceiling. All slots and all backplane lanes are PCIe 3.0. Workloads that would saturate Gen3 (high-end NVMe arrays, 100 GbE adapters at line rate, modern accelerator cards) will be bottlenecked. The upgrade path is the R750 (15th gen, Gen4) or R760 (16th gen, Gen5).
• Memory speed drops at 2 DPC on Cascade Lake. Full 24-DIMM population drops effective speed to DDR4-2666 from the 2933 MT/s peak on Gold 6200 / 5222 SKUs. The full-channel bandwidth gain consistently outperforms half the channels at higher clock for memory-bound workloads.
• High-TDP CPUs require performance heatsinks. Any CPU above 150W TDP, including 165W and 205W SKUs, needs the high-performance heatsink kit and high-performance fan kit. The 8-Bay's slight thermal advantage does not eliminate this requirement; the kit threshold is the same as the 16-Bay.
• GPU effectiveness is bandwidth-limited, not slot-limited. The chassis supports up to 3 double-width 300W GPUs, but PCIe Gen3 lanes throttle current-gen GPUs (H100, L40S, A100) to roughly half their potential host bandwidth vs Gen4 or Gen5 platforms. For VDI with T4-class GPUs the Gen3 ceiling is not a problem; for serious multi-GPU AI compute it is.
• 14th gen, not current production. Dell's current 2U production platform is the R760. The R740 represents strong refurbished value in 2026 but is not new hardware.

Workload Fit

Where to Look Instead

• Need more than 8 local drives? The R740 16-Bay 2.5" doubles the front bay count via SAS expander. The textbook config for vSAN OSA and high-density local-storage builds. Bay configuration is welded into the chassis, so buy the right bay count up front.
• Bulk LFF capacity in 2U? The R740 8-Bay 3.5" takes eight 3.5" hot-swap LFF drives for high-capacity spinning disk builds in the same chassis. For higher LFF bay counts, the R740xd 12-Bay 3.5" is the storage-dense step up.
• Native NVMe across front bays? The R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" NVMe variant is the all-NVMe specialist in the R740xd family. No R740 chassis supports front NVMe.
• 1U companion with the same compute-first positioning? The R640 8-Bay 2.5" is the 1U compute-first companion on the same Intel Purley platform. Same CPU family, same memory architecture, half the PCIe budget.
• HPE-side equivalent? The HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10 8-Bay 2.5" is the direct counterpart on the same Intel Purley platform. The DL380 Gen10 16-Bay 2.5" is the high-bay HPE companion.
• Need PCIe Gen4 NVMe or DDR4-3200? The R750 (15th gen, Ice Lake-SP) brings PCIe Gen4, DDR4-3200, 32 DIMM slots, and 3rd Gen Xeon Scalable up to 40 cores per socket.
• Need current-generation Dell support and DDR5? The R760 (16th gen, Sapphire Rapids / Emerald Rapids) is the current production 2U platform with DDR5 at 5600 MT/s, PCIe Gen5, and up to 64 cores per socket on Emerald Rapids.

Ready to Configure?

Tell us your workload (SQL Server consolidation, application tier, mid-density virtualization, 2U GPU host), target CPU class and per-core licensing context if applicable, target memory footprint, local storage configuration (typically 2 to 8 SAS SSDs plus BOSS), NDC choice (10 GbE or 25 GbE), PCIe card list for riser confirmation, and quantity. Our account team returns a fully specced build with formal pricing within 24 hours, including thermal validation on high-TDP CPU configurations (where this chassis's slight airflow advantage vs the 16-Bay is most relevant) and PCIe slot allocation across NIC, HBA, GPU, and any add-in cards. Every refurbished unit ships with the Wholesale Servers 180-day warranty and 12+ hour burn-in testing, and volume pricing starts at 5 units. Call 1-800-778-1545 or use the quote form below.