I Bought a Dell PowerEdge R730 for $448, Quick Overview and Testing

Featured Products: (affiliate links)
Dell PowerEdge R730... ebay.us/oEBxb2
I won an eBay auction for a Dell PowerEdge R730. The server includes an E5-2697 v3 CPU, 384GB DDR4 memory, and dual 2-port 10GbE network adapters. Did I get a good deal? Seems like an incredible bargain!
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction
00:38 External Overview
01:40 Internal Overview
02:59 CPU & Memory Changes
03:50 The Problems
04:52 Firmware & BIOS Changes
06:58 Chia Plotting Test
07:58 Final Thoughts
Contact Info:
Business email is [e-mail]. I am not available for personal project questions or consultation.
Disclaimers and Statements:
► I receive a small commission on purchases made using my affiliated links shared the video description and comments section. The views and opinions expressed here are my own, unbiased, and not influenced by this commission in any way.

[@HomeSysAdmin]

Dell PowerEdge R730... ebay.us/oEBxb2 What do you think? Did I get a good deal!? (affiliate links)

[@techie587]

Yes

[@bigdaddyofsi]

I think you did, nice one!

[@akhan3682]

Dude, you video is solid gold! Two simple tips easily implemented and night and day impact - thanks for making and sharing!!!

[@spiketm7060]

Very nice setup. Have you tried spinning up a VM and plotting on it with same settings? Curious how VM environment would affect plotting performance

[@z1power]

The extra power connector and the grill at 0:47 are meant for a tape drive, that's why the grill is easily removable..

[@SilentDecode]

Updating firmware and clearing the UEFI and iDRAC is step #1 you do with a new server..

[@HomeSysAdmin]

Yee, should have known that I guess lol

[@JasonsLabVideos]

Good video sir !! the 730's are nice units ! Now you just need 8 x 2.5" 2tb ssds :)

[@callmebigpapa]

I have 2 730's in the lab and they are great! I think the price you got it for is good but in the last year the price for these has plummeted so just be prepared for them to go to r720 territory soon as more data centers cycle them out and the market floods. Already seeing lots of systems from China due to out of band upgrades due to the paranoia over not being able to get new servers soon. Also for the noise levels you can lower the fan speed with the ipmi commands.

[@mamdouh-Tawadros]

Thank you for a very interesting enjoyable video.

[@SilentDecode]

I've got the same server here running at home for a few months now. Single E5-2697A v4, 192GB DDR4 ECC REG and some non-enterprise NVMe SSDs in a Asus Hyper M.2 x16 card. If you want to run more than 2 SSDs in that card, you'll have to replace riser 3 to a single x16 slot to be able to configure x4x4x4x4 bifurcation. Oh, and it runs ESXi 8 with vCenter.

[@JSLEnterprises]

why bother with a boss card when you can get the nvme hot swap bay kit for the front and use u.2 drives that go into the double digits of tb's.

[@funy0n583]

@@JSLEnterprisesbecause U.2 drives are quadruple the price 😂 what a silly question

[@TheTrulyInsane]

Not bad, I just picked up (just got the notice it shipped today) DELL POWERVAULT NX3200 R720XD 12-BAY 3.5" 2X-E5-2697V2 128GB H710 NO HD IDRAC T7 - paid $250, with shipping and taxes, came to $358.45. As it states it has 12 3.5" bays and 2 2.5" bays in the rear.. I can't wait to play with it, I'm going to put Proxmox on it and run Xpenology to handle the 3.5" drives, then I can sell my Synology DS2414+ and have the best of both worlds and still come out ahead on cash. I just love enterprise hardware and watching ebay listings :)

[@reinekewf7987]

i have the r630 so basically the same machine but 1u. mine was coming with two e5 2699v4, 128gb 4 stick ram kit so only 2 of the 4 channels where populated, 1gbit 2 ethernet ports and 2 ssfp 10gbit ports nic, the perc h330 mini as radi controller, mine is a 8 bay model, no dvd drive, two sas 10k 1.8 hdd in a preconfigured raid 1 and also i had windows server on it, but i use ubuntu 22.04 with the additional software of ubuntu server. i bought mine like this for 600€ including shipping i a wooden box. i upgraded the ram to 768gb in total and put 4 sata ssd as raid 10 as mein drive and use the sas hdd as long therm storage and i put 3 nvidia quadro t1000 in the pcie slots. i do weather calculations and ai image creation with it. i know 40W is a bit too much for the pcie because it is only rated to 25W but i have no issues driving them. besides this all my other services at home run also on the same machine. i set mine as dynamic power so it can idle at 60W instead of the 200W in performance mode. but the overall performance is the same but the system needs some time to ramp up but for me it is fine most of the time the system is idling.

[@kiakovidis]

Thanks for the nice video. Can you please elaborate on the NVME support? Did you use PCIe to NVME M.2 adapter and slot bifurcation?

[@HomeSysAdmin]

They're PCIe to NVMe adapters. They are not using bifurcation. I would love to get a card that supports bifurcation but they're a bit too pricey at this point.

[@user-lg9bd3vw5p]

How would you describe fan noise during normal operation?

[@lnxpro]

Next one you should get a R740XD LFF with the optional internal tray. You can fit 12x 3.5" SAS / SATA drives in the front trays, 4 additional 3.5" SAS / SATA in the internal tray and two additional 2.5" SAS / SATA in the back however that entire setup will cost a pretty penny however the 14th gen Dell servers are very power efficient and expect less power consumption for more performance :D If you have any other Dell questions, feel free to hit me up. I work in IT supporting a wide variety of servers and storage platforms but Dell is the most ubiquitous platform.

[@Mark300win]

I have R740 can it be converted to XD? How many x16 gpu will it fit?

[@camaycama7479]

the reason why one pcie16x is covered up is because there's only one CPU installed on the server. Once you'll add the other one that riser will become usable.

[@HomeSysAdmin]

Correct, found that out after reading the manual. LOL

[@raymundestera8591]

Hi Sir I have this R730 and for my front bay we only have a 2.5 sas, can this Dell R730 have a 3.5 sas bay or any backplane for HDD storage? thank you and appreciate your videos!

[@clarencewiles963]

Needing a few parts $ but with that said. Bad programming replacement equals a good deal on hardware!

[@mathewz7434]

hello my r730 server i want to install ubuntu , everytime i try installing it says "usb disconnect *" please if you have come across this problem what could be the solution?

[@drcemdede]

Hi, thank you very much for the videos. I recently bought an R730 with 2x2699V3 and aim to use it for quantitative analysis. I installed Ubuntu, and I ran the analysis on Jupyter. While answering one of the questions below, you mention that you fit in an NVIDIA 3060 12GB in the system. Please put a short video on that one as well. Could you help me buy a suitable cable for the card? Besides CPU-intensive analysis, I would like to work on ML models. And I would like to hear about your experience with the CPU speeds. I try to use parallel computing, but I'm missing something because whenever I do something that relies on the CPU, it is only using maximum 4 cores. And I end up having longer processing times even though there are 36 cores in total. I really appreciate any help you can provide.

[@mathewz7434]

hello, how did you manage installing ubuntu and what version of ubuntu? my r730 server i want to install ubuntu , everytime i try installing it says "usb disconnect *" please if you have come across this problem what could be the solution?

[@techie587]

Could you suggest a good server for 40 client machine....for a school

[@user-eb1cu3mg5i]

If I want to use external graphics RTX2060 after installing the first Windows for 10 days, do I set it in the BIOS initial window? Or do you set it to dry...? I would appreciate it if you could tell me the address of the website where the setting device drive is located.

[@oxfletch]

I was looking at getting one of these - very curious what your power consumption is at idle? My old r810 is 330W which is brutal

[@HomeSysAdmin]

I don't have a measurement offhand but it's probably close and is one of the reasons I've pretty much avoided dual CPUs servers in my lab rack. The wattage adds up fast with ram too - 24 sticks at 3W each is 72W just in ram!

[@wilsonsony]

Thanks for Sharing, just curious how loud is this server compare to the 1 U rack like R610?

[@HomeSysAdmin]

I consider it loud. I have it running next to my desk most of the time still and it starts bothering me after a while. I really need to move it to the rack or at least another room, but I haven't found any rails for the right price yet.

[@user-lg9bd3vw5p]

@@HomeSysAdmin You can get these fake rails that are more of a shelf. Less convenient but they are only like 30-40 bucks.

[@ronwatkins5775]

Is it possible to put a consumer GPU (NVIDIA 30xx) into a Dell server such as the R730? Or do you only do that with the tower/workstation systems?

[@HomeSysAdmin]

I sure hope so as I plan to do exactly this. I have a 3060 arriving tomorrow, will let you know!

[@HomeSysAdmin]

Forgot to follow up, but yes I was able to fit an EVGA 3060 12GB without any problems! I removed the 4x1GbE network card from below and there is plenty of air movement to keep it cool.

[@lexhoang]

In Vietnam it is sold at a very cheap price used r730 server about 98% ram 32gb x 8 2400mhz new PM883 960GB x 8 new E5-2699v4 x 2 used 99% yes it's only about 892USD 😄

[@tofailtowin9046]

i got one for 328 free shipping, bless the seller!

[@HomeSysAdmin]

Wow, great deal!! How much memory and was it the same seller?

[@tofailtowin9046]

@@HomeSysAdmin no , he still has one left Dakotajoey

[@tofailtowin9046]

@@HomeSysAdmin 32gb 2x 12c24t

[@declanmcardle]

Memory sounds like it was worth it on its own (and CPU).

[@sunnylm2045]

Definitely its a great deal 🎉, just wondering what the power consumption?

[@dorferino]

It's probably too late for you but to everyone else it's 60W idle, about 180W under load, and 10W powered off.

[@DaveChurchill]

Does the R730 support Proxmox being installed on it?

[@HomeSysAdmin]

Yes! The R730 is pretty much the go-to choice for homelab use with proxmox.

[@DaveChurchill]

@@HomeSysAdmin I am debating picking up a used one vs. just using an old 7940x that I have. I'm not sure if I want to have to wear earplugs walking around the house

[@HomeSysAdmin]

@@DaveChurchill This is one of the reasons I've stuck mostly with Supermicro hardware. It tends to be more standard (ATX boards, fan sizes, etc) and allows for customization to fit your needs vs proprietary designs. I don't use the R730 for much beyond Chia plotting to be honest. Most of my VMs are running on 1U or 2U Supermicro's.

[@RimdarRanch]

I just Sold ( gave away ) a Dell Server T320 Intel Xeon Processor 6 cores / 12 Threads 8gb ram

[@HomeSysAdmin]

That sounds pretty old :)

[@williamrockhill8018]

did you get any drive sleds

[@HomeSysAdmin]

It did not come with any trays unfortunately. I just pulled some from the antiquated 1950 systems and they actually fit.

[@williamrockhill8018]

@@HomeSysAdmin Awesome nice to have old parts laying Around

[@williamrockhill8018]

@@HomeSysAdmin I'm learning the server thing and have windows 10 running my network having issues transferring files to the Naz. even though they are connected, and all drives are shared. I have 3 computers on my network using an AMD3 with a msi 970a mother board with a 4 core 4 thread CPU its base clock is 3400 MHZ

[@JSLEnterprises]

R730's have USB 3.0.

[@bdhaliwal24]

Seems like servers are loss-leaders and they all make their money on the rails :)

[@ScruffyITA]

hi and nice video. i got an r730 , but every pcie card i install, give me bsod...."whea uncorrectable error", but if i install a h200 sas pcie it works perfectly. i tried anso intel arc a770 brand new and got bsod too. is there any configuration i have to do or check ?

[@HomeSysAdmin]

Sounds like a hardware error of some kind. Have you checked the PCIe slot for damaged pins? Might also pull the CPUs and carefully inspect the pins there as well. Other than that, not sure unfortunately.

[@ScruffyITA]

@@HomeSysAdmin tnx for reply. i tried with different pcie card and the dell h200 sas controller works just fine.

[@HomeSysAdmin]

Well what I'm wondering if maybe there's a pin damaged that's taking out one of the lanes but not the whole slot. For example, the SAS controller is probably an x8 card whereas a GPU is going to be x16. That could explain why you're seeing errors with the A770 but not the H200 - the H200 isn't using lanes 9-16. It's worth checking the pins :)

[@ScruffyITA]

@@HomeSysAdmin i checked both cpu socket and pcie pins and they are all ok. ive tried an 9800gt and it works perfectly.