Dell PowerEdge R740xd 24-Bay 2.5"
Configure Your System:
1 Processor Required
Step 1: Choose a series
Both generations drop into the same R740xd motherboard, so this is a price and features decision, not a compatibility one.
Intel Xeon Gen 1 (Skylake-SP, 4100/5100/6100/8100 series) is the value play. Mature, plentiful, and the best price per core in the lineup. Memory tops out at 2666 MT/s.
Intel Xeon Gen 2 (Cascade Lake-SP, 4200/5200/6200/8200 series) adds higher clocks per tier, 2933 MT/s memory support on Gold 6200 SKUs, and Optane PMem support on L-series parts. Worth the premium when per-core performance is load-bearing; otherwise Gen 1 does the same job for less.
Whichever series you pick, populate both sockets. A single-CPU R740xd loses half its memory channels, half its DIMM slots, and the PCIe slots that route through the second CPU, and a storage node needs those lanes for controllers and networking.
Step 2: Choose your CPU
A storage-first chassis does not need top-bin compute, but do not starve it either: vSAN, Ceph, and Storage Spaces Direct all burn real CPU cycles on checksums, erasure coding, and rebuilds.
Running Windows Server 2022 or 2025? Two 8-core Gold CPUs land exactly on the 16-core base license. Our pick is the Gold 6134 (8 cores, 3.2 GHz, 130W): high clocks per core, which Windows and Storage Spaces workloads reward.
Building a software-defined storage node on vSphere, Proxmox, or Ceph? The Gold 6230 (20 cores, 2.1 GHz, 125W) is the balanced default, and VMware's 16-core-per-socket license minimum makes the 8-core strategy pointless there anyway.
Silver covers backup targets and archive nodes where the drives do the work. Platinum rarely belongs in this chassis; if the workload needs that much compute, the storage probably belongs on a SAN.
Fair warning on any CPU above 150W: the high-performance heatsink and fan kit are required, not optional. Confirm they are in your build before checkout.
2 Heat Sink Optional
Standard heatsink covers CPUs up to 150W TDP in a straightforward front-bay configuration in a normal datacenter environment.
High-performance heatsink is required above 150W, and we also spec it on lower-wattage CPUs whenever the build includes mid-bay drives. The R740xd's internal drive trays sit directly in the airflow path between the fans and the CPUs, and a fully loaded chassis makes the processors work harder for their cooling. Dell's thermal restriction tables get strict on this platform for exactly that reason.
The practical rule: light front-bay build with mainstream CPUs, standard heatsink is fine. Loaded storage configuration or anything above 150W, take the high-performance kit. On a chassis you bought specifically to fill with drives, plan on the second case. The cost difference is small and it is a lot cheaper than a thermal event.
3 Memory (RAM) Required
There are two benefits. The first is performance: full population at 2 DPC keeps all twelve memory channels working at maximum depth, and on memory-bandwidth-sensitive workloads it consistently outperforms a partial population running at higher clock. On a storage node the memory is not idle either; vSAN, Ceph, ZFS, and Storage Spaces Direct all lean on RAM for caching and metadata, and every one of them performs better with room to breathe. The second is cost per gigabyte: 24 smaller modules hit the same capacity for meaningfully less than 12 larger ones, and 768 GB as 24× 32 GB is the best cost per GB in the lineup.
We know the instinct is to leave a few slots open for a later upgrade, and on paper that is sensible. In practice it rarely plays out well. One year from now you are hunting for DIMMs that match the rank and speed of what is already in the box, and a mismatch either clocks the whole server down or refuses to train. The server is in production by then, so adding memory means a maintenance window you have to schedule and justify.
Buy the capacity now, in one matched set.
384 GB (24× 16 GB) for a backup target or archive node where storage, not compute, is the job
768 GB (24× 32 GB) is our default for a vSAN, Ceph, or Storage Spaces Direct node, and for any host mixing storage with real VM duty
1.5 TB (24× 64 GB) for dense consolidation on top of the storage role
Past 1.5 TB you are into 128 GB LRDIMMs, which reach 3 TB but cost substantially more per GB. Most buyers are better served by a second node.
4 RAID Controllers Optional
If this node is running traditional hardware RAID, the bay count makes the controller choice for you.
PERC H740P (8 GB NV cache, battery-backed) is the default on this chassis, not the upgrade. A 12- or 24-drive array generates enough parity work and write traffic that the 8 GB non-volatile cache is the difference between an array that performs and one that merely functions.
PERC H730P (2 GB cache, battery-backed) is defensible on a lightly populated build with modest write load, but if you are filling the bays, spend the small difference on the H740P.
PERC H330 and S140 do not belong on this chassis. A no-cache controller in front of two dozen drives is a bottleneck you paid extra to install.
Whichever path you take, RAID 6 over RAID 5 on any large-capacity spinning array, and plan a hot spare; at this drive count the first failure is a when, not an if.
5 Storage Drives Select up to 24 drives (0/24 Slots Used) Optional
First: buy SSDs. No moving parts means the dominant failure mode of spinning disk is gone, and at this bay count the failure math compounds: two dozen spindles means the array is nearly always closer to its next failure than its last one. SAS SSDs are the production pick: higher endurance, dual-port connectivity, and sustained-write behavior that holds up under real load. SATA SSDs are the value pick for read-heavy volumes and capacity tiers. Where 10K SAS spinning drives still earn bays is bulk capacity on a budget: backup staging, logs, archives. We quote them for that role, and only that role.
Second: buy new. This is the one component category where we steer you away from refurbished, and we sell refurbished servers for a living. A refurbished drive arrives with unknown miles on its endurance budget, and on a node this dense, one tired drive can drag a whole pool. For production data, new drives are where your money belongs.
Mind the RAID math at this scale: RAID 6 over RAID 5 on any large array, hot spare mandatory, and keep a consistent drive model within each array. If this node is feeding vSAN, Ceph, or Storage Spaces Direct, skip hardware RAID and take the HBA330 (see the RAID step).
Our favorite move on this chassis: put the OS on a Dell BOSS card, available in the Add Ons section below. Mirrored M.2 boot drives keep all twenty-four bays free for what you bought this chassis to do.
6 Remote Access Required
The dividing line is the remote console. iDRAC9 Enterprise gives you full remote KVM and virtual media, meaning you can reach the server's screen, mount an ISO, and rebuild an OS from anywhere, even when the operating system is down. Express does not include the remote console, so any problem below the OS level means walking to the rack.
Our recommendation: Enterprise, and on a storage node it is closer to mandatory than optional. An R740xd typically holds a cluster's data, sits in a datacenter or colo, and gets touched rarely; that is exactly the profile where remote console, virtual media, and automated firmware updates earn their keep. Enterprise also adds two-factor authentication and secure erase, and secure erase matters on a chassis that will retire holding two dozen drives of company data.
Express is the right call only when the server sits down the hall and someone can physically reach it without ceremony.
If you are deploying 5 or more units, take Enterprise on all of them. Fleet management without remote console access does not work in practice.
7 Power Supply 1x included in build Required
A fully loaded spinning-disk chassis is the case to plan for: two dozen drives add hundreds of watts on their own, and spinning drives pull their peak current at spin-up, exactly when the server is also busiest bringing everything else online.
2x 750W covers moderate builds: mainstream CPUs with a partially populated backplane or an all-flash configuration, where per-drive draw is lower.
2x 1100W is our default for this chassis. A dual Gold build with a fully populated spinning-disk backplane lands comfortably inside it, with the 50 percent load target intact.
2x 1600W and above is for top-bin CPUs with every bay spinning, or any configuration adding GPUs to the storage role.
Two rules of thumb from our deployments. Size for roughly 50 percent load at your expected peak: a PSU running at half capacity runs at peak efficiency, runs cooler, and lasts longer than one working near its limit. And when your build sits between two tiers, size up; the price step is small. Watch the estimated TDP counter at the bottom of the page as you add components to see where your build lands.
One planning note: if more drives are coming later, size the PSU for the full backplane now. Drives arrive in twos and threes; a PSU swap is a second shipment.
8 Network Cards Required
Speed first, and on this chassis the storage role sets the floor. A node holding this many drives is almost certainly serving that capacity to other machines, and every byte leaves through this card. Quad 1 GbE (Intel i350 or Broadcom 5720) only makes sense if this is a self-contained backup or archive box that nothing else mounts. For anything serving storage (vSAN, Ceph, Storage Spaces Direct, NFS, iSCSI) treat 10 Gb as the floor: the 2x 10 Gb + 2x 1 Gb combo cards cover production traffic with 1 Gb left for management, and quad 10 Gb (Intel X710, X550, Broadcom 57840S) is the right architecture when production, replication, and management each get their own links. Rebuild and resync traffic is the hidden load here; when a node re-enters a cluster, the network is what determines whether recovery takes hours or days.
Then port type, and this is the one that catches people. SFP+ ports take fiber or DAC cables and talk to datacenter-grade switches. The -T models (X540, X550) are 10GBASE-T copper on ordinary RJ45. Neither is better; they must simply match your switch. Order SFP+ against a copper-only switch and the server racks up with nothing to plug into.
Need 25 GbE for an all-flash cluster fabric, or additional PCIe network cards beyond the NDC? Both are in the Add Ons section below, or call 1-800-778-1545 and we will spec the whole path.
9 Operating System Required
Windows Server 2022 is the version to buy today; 2019 belongs on a new build only when an application vendor requires it. Standard licensing is per core with a 16-core base, which is why our processor guidance steers Windows buyers to two 8-core CPUs: the 16-Core license covers that build exactly. Past 16 total cores, you need the 24-Core option. On CALs, count your users and round up. One xd-specific note: Storage Spaces Direct requires Datacenter edition, not Standard, so if this node is joining an S2D cluster, budget accordingly.
Fair warning on Evaluation Editions: free and fully functional for 180 days, then they expire. Right for labs and proof-of-concept, wrong for production. If the server is going into service, buy the license now.
VMware ESXi 8.0 is the one to deploy; 6.7 and 7.0 are past end of support and only belong on hosts joining an existing cluster. Licensing is yours to bring, and vSAN licensing applies on top for storage clusters.
Proxmox VE is what we increasingly quote for buyers done with VMware licensing costs, and the R740xd is arguably the best Proxmox and Ceph node in our lineup: open-source KVM virtualization with clustering and live migration, no per-core math, and a bay count built for Ceph OSDs.
Ubuntu Server LTS covers Linux storage and application duty with five years of free updates, and it is the standard base for standalone Ceph deployments.
No OS is there for teams imaging from their own deployment infrastructure, including TrueNAS builds, which this chassis handles well.
Not sure which fits? Tell us the workload at quote time, or call 1-800-778-1545.
10 Add-Ons Optional
WServer Warranty
Dell PowerEdge R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" [14th Gen] Detailed Review
Standard SAS/SATA backplane, no NVMe. This page is the R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" with the plain 24-bay SAS/SATA front backplane: twenty-four hot-swap 2.5" bays on a SAS expander, all of them on the PERC, none of them NVMe-capable. It is the lowest-cost way into 24 SFF bays on a 14th gen Dell 2U, and the right chassis when every drive in the build is a SAS or SATA SSD or a 10K SAS HDD. The Intel Purley dual-socket compute platform is identical to the rest of the R740xd family; the only thing this page changes is the backplane.
For the IT director sizing a vSAN OSA all-flash node on SAS SSD, a Ceph all-flash OSD node, a database server with a local SAS SSD tier, a file server, or a general-purpose virtualization host, this is the simplest R740xd 24-bay to spec and the cheapest to buy. If any NVMe drives are in the plan, route to the 4x NVMe, 8x NVMe, 12x NVMe or 24x NVMe companion pages; those carry the NVMe-capable backplanes. For rear bays, the 24-Bay 2.5" + 4-Bay RFB companion adds four.
To configure a build, call 1-800-778-1545 for our account team. Every R740xd we ship runs through a 12+ hour burn-in across every memory channel, every PCIe slot and every drive bay under load. Every unit ships with a 180-day standard warranty and 1-Year, 2-Year, and 3-Year Premium options at quote time. Volume pricing applies at 5 units and above.
When the Standard 24-Bay Is the Right Choice
Pick this chassis when:
- Every drive in the build is SAS SSD, SATA SSD or 10K SAS HDD, with no NVMe now and none planned
- You want 24 SFF bays on a 14th gen Dell at the lowest chassis cost
- The controller plan is hardware RAID on a PERC (H730P or H740P) or HBA330 pass-through for SDS, with every bay behind that one controller
- You are building vSAN OSA all-flash on SAS SSD, Ceph all-flash OSD, a SAS SSD database tier, a file server, or general virtualization
- Your single-chassis SFF capacity target is 100 to 180 TB raw on SAS SSD
Pick a different R740xd variant when:
- You want a few NVMe drives for a cache or hot tier (the 4x NVMe is the same chassis with bays 21-24 NVMe-capable)
- You want a hybrid SAS/SATA + NVMe mix (the 8x NVMe and 12x NVMe companions)
- You need all-NVMe across all 24 bays (the 24x NVMe companion)
- Bulk capacity at lowest cost-per-TB matters more than IOPS (the 12-Bay 3.5" with NL-SAS)
- You need 28 SFF in a single chassis (the + 4-Bay RFB companion)
Storage - 24x 2.5" SAS/SATA Front Bays
Twenty-four hot-swap 2.5" SAS/SATA front bays on a SAS expander backplane. The expander routes all 24 bays through a single PERC connection; we firmware-check the expander as part of burn-in. There is no NVMe path on this backplane: no flex-zoning, no PCIe-attached bays, no NVMe controller cards to budget PCIe slots for. That simplicity is the point of this chassis.
Drive options we quote:
- SAS SSD Read-Intensive: 1.92 TB, 3.84 TB, 7.68 TB. Volume sweet spot for SDS deployments.
- SAS SSD Mixed-Use: 1.92 TB, 3.84 TB. For write-intensive workloads (cache tier, OLTP, vSAN cache disks).
- SATA SSD Mixed-Use: 1.92 TB, 3.84 TB. Cost-effective general VM storage.
- 10K SAS HDD: 1.2 TB, 2.4 TB. Mixed deployments with moderate IOPS needs at lower cost per TB than SSD.
RAID guidance for SFF SSD arrays: RAID 5 is acceptable for SSD arrays up to 6 drives. Above 6 drives we recommend RAID 6 for second-failure margin during rebuild. RAID 10 for write-heavy workloads. For SDS deployments (vSAN OSA, Ceph), use HBA330 in pass-through mode and let the SDS layer handle redundancy.
Boot: BOSS-S1 (dual mirrored M.2 SATA SSDs on a dedicated PCIe card, hardware RAID 1). We add it to every R740xd BOM by default and reserve all 24 front bays for the workload.
Storage Controllers
The full 14th gen PERC family is available via the Mini-PERC slot, and because every bay on this backplane sits behind that controller, the choice covers the whole array. PERC H740P (8 GB NV cache) is the production default for SAS/SATA RAID. PERC H730P (2 GB cache) for mixed or read-heavy workloads where the H740P is over-spec. HBA330 pass-through for vSAN OSA, Storage Spaces Direct, Ceph and ZFS. PERC H840 for external SAS enclosures. H730 and H330 are listed for completeness; S140 is dev/test only.
Processors, Memory, Networking, Management
Same platform as every R740xd: 1st and 2nd Generation Intel Xeon Scalable in LGA 3647, 24 DDR4 DIMM slots (12 per CPU, up to 3 TB with 128 GB RDIMMs), Dell NDC mezzanine networking (4x 1 GbE through 2x 25 GbE), up to 8 PCIe Gen3 slots, and iDRAC9 Enterprise with Silicon Root of Trust. The standard heatsink covers CPUs up to 150W TDP; above that the high-performance heatsink is required. Single-socket builds lose half the DIMM slots and half the PCIe lanes. The 24-bay 2.5" chassis supports GPU risers (up to 3 double-width 300W or 6 single-width 150W); with no NVMe controller cards competing for riser slots, the plain backplane leaves the full GPU envelope available.
Power and Cooling
Hot-swap redundant Dell Flex Slot PSUs: 495W, 750W, 1100W, 1600W, 2000W, 2400W. A balanced build (Gold 6230, 384 GB, 24x SAS SSD, no GPU) draws about 560W peak on 2x 1100W Platinum. GPU-equipped builds step to 2000W or 2400W. Standard 14th gen 2U hot-swap fan kit, N+1 redundancy.
Physical Specs & Platform Notes
- Form factor: 2U rack, approximately 86.8 mm x 482.0 mm x 715.5 mm (H x W x D) with bezel. Fits standard 1000 mm cabinet rails with cable management arm.
- Parts availability: Excellent through 2030 minimum; the 24-bay 2.5" is one of the highest-volume 14th gen storage SKUs on the secondary market.
- Accessories we recommend: Dell ReadyRails II sliding rail kit, cable management arm, Dell LCD bezel (confirm part numbers at quote time against your chassis revision).
- Platform notes: CPU hot-plug not supported. Riser configuration is order-time locked. SAS expander backplane firmware verified at intake. Bay configuration is part of the physical chassis and cannot be changed in the field; if NVMe is ever in the plan, buy the NVMe-capable backplane up front.
Our Assessment
Where it excels: The lowest-cost 24 SFF chassis in the R740xd family, with nothing to configure on the storage side beyond drive and controller. SAS SSD vSAN OSA and Ceph nodes, SAS SSD database tiers, file servers, and general virtualization hosts are the configurations we ship most often on it.
Where to look instead: Any build with NVMe drives belongs on one of the NVMe-capable companions. Bulk LFF capacity belongs on the 12-Bay 3.5". Hardware NVMe RAID is not available on 14th gen at all; 16th gen R760xd2 with PERC H965i is that upgrade path.
Bottom line: If every drive is SAS or SATA, this is the R740xd 24-bay to buy. You give up nothing the workload needs and you pay for nothing it does not.
Where to Look Instead
- R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" 4x NVMe: Same chassis with four NVMe-capable bays. Choose for a small NVMe cache or hot tier.
- R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" 8x NVMe: Hybrid 16 SAS/SATA + 8 NVMe backplane.
- R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" 12x NVMe: Hybrid 12 SAS/SATA + 12 NVMe backplane.
- R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" 24x NVMe: All-NVMe companion with native PCIe-attached backplane.
- R740xd 24-Bay 2.5" + 4-Bay RFB: Same front 24 SFF plus 4 rear bays for 28 SFF total.
- R740xd 12-Bay 3.5": The bulk LFF capacity reference page.
Ready to Configure?
Tell us your workload, target CPU class, memory capacity, drive configuration (SAS or SATA, capacity per drive, RAID strategy), network bandwidth, and quantity. Our account team will put together a tailored quote within 24 hours. Not sure the standard 24-bay is the right variant? Tell us about your workload and we will recommend the right R740xd companion.
Call 1-800-778-1545 for our account team. Every R740xd ships with a 180-day standard warranty, runs through our 12+ hour burn-in with full SMART validation on every drive bay, and qualifies for volume pricing at 5 units and above. Request a Quote | Contact our account team
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