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Dell PowerEdge R730...
Dell PowerEdge R730...
I picked up this Dell PowerEdge R730 on eBay and it ended up being a surprisingly solid home lab box for the money. With DDR4, a ton of RAM, and plenty of expansion (including 10GbE and room for more PCIe), it’s a great platform for testing, demos, and heavy workloads once the firmware/BIOS is sorted.
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Pros
- +DDR4 platform with lots of memory capacity (mine came with 384GB)
- +Good I/O options: iDRAC, 4x1GbE plus dual 10GbE adapters
- +Plenty of PCIe expansion and GPU power headers for add-in cards
- +Quieter than expected for a 2U server under load
Cons
- -May require firmware updates and BIOS reset to resolve stability issues
- -Rails weren’t included and rail kits can be pricey
- -High power draw under heavy load (around 380–450W in my testing)
