PowerEdge Dell R630 Server | 2X E5-2695 v4 = 36 Cores | 256GB RAM | 2X 480GB SSD (Renewed)

I watched lots of videos and am very pleased with the purchase. I needed a GPU-less HPC for data wrangling and inference. It's cheap, performs well, quiet, clean, lowish power (75W idle), 256GB RAM. I even bought a second server and connected an Nvidia 3090 GPU and upgraded to 512GB RAM. Notes: 1. If you'll be using as a HPC and shuffling 25GB+ files, use SSDs having both DRAM and TLC. 2. Added 4 Samsung 1TB SSDs SATA drives to make a 4TB RAID 0. Fast although not redundant. 3. Added a Lexar 4TB NVME drive and plugged it into the PCIe 3.0 slot using a cheap adapter. Nice, runs at full NVME speed. 4. I recommend re-pasting the CPUs as it's easy and only takes 10 minutes. I used Artic M4. 5. If you want to add RAM, make sure you buy matching RDIMM and not LRDIMM. 6. Bought extra caddies (ASIN B07WDJY2JZ). 7. Bought VGA to HDMI adapter (ASIN B08MF2L1Z). 8. Tried Windows Server 2022, Windows Workstation but ultimately elected to use Windows 11 Pro. 9. Really like having iDRAC server management. Recommend getting to know it. 10. Not all server variations are quiet, mine are. YMMV. 11. Added Nvidia 3090 GPU using 600mm PCIe extender cable (ASIN B0C415XBQZ), GPU mounted in mining rig (ASIN B07H44QS7N), 1050w power supply ATX 3.0 PSU (ASIN B0C1JHWWZL) and always-powered-on dongle (ASIN B01N8Q0TOE). 12. When a PCIe card is added, the server fans go wild trying to cool the PCIe card. Quiet them by using ipmitool and the hex codes to disable PCIe fan control. Dell site has docs. Only do so if the PCIe is external or internal but runs cool. 13. Upgraded ethernet board to a Dell Intel X550-T4 10GbE Quad Port Base-T NDC (64PJ8). Easy and only takes a few minutes. The board does 2.5Gbps although not documented. Using a MokerLink 8 Port 10GBASE-T RJ-45 switch (ASIN B0C1YDTSQD).

Excellent R630, flawless, quiet, work great. It is built like a tank. Great price since 10 years ago it was $20,000 (Chatgpt said). It work so well, I cancel Warrantee I paid, since I know it will last without needing warrantee. In fact I am ordring 1 more and will order more as I need from same model, and from same seller if he still have more when I expand my server in future..

Everything checks out! Idles down to 43db and max is 63db. Also great blade for a home lab! Loaded Centos Stream 9 onto it and I’m seriously impressed by the ease with which you can spin up VM’s. Truly thankful for the opportunity to work with some retired enterprise grade equipment. In my world (SOX controlled) this is a part of the tech business I simply can’t touch. Now I can and thank you! For this type of compute power, 72 virtual cpu and 256 GB ram, with 1tb SSD, if you are technically capable of running this blade in house you will save money over using a provider. Love it!

Came with the side mounts broken, going to have to figure out a different mounting solution. Have not yet turned it on

I recently purchased a used Dell R630 server on Amazon and overall, I am very satisfied with my purchase. The server works flawlessly and is exactly as described, with one minor exception. The chassis that was included was actually an 8 bay instead of a 10 bay as advertised. While this might be a deal breaker for some buyers, it actually worked out great for me as I preferred the 8 bay configuration. The server is fast, reliable, and has been running smoothly since I installed it. I was able to set up my applications and virtual machines with ease and haven't experienced any issues so far. The seller shipped the item quickly and it arrived in excellent condition. The only minor issue was with the chassis, but this didn't affect the performance of the server in any way.

The Dell R630 server arrived properly packaged and in good order, no damages on the box. The packaging was comparable to what you will get from Dell. Inside the server was dust cleaned except for the memory sticks. I thoroughly tested the server and all components worked fine. The vendor installed blanks for the unused drive bays while the two provided drives were Hewlett Packard Enterprise SSD's. This was pleasant because other server vendors would leave unused drive bays open. I started the the server with the unlicensed Windows Server OS 2019. It worked without any problems. It was encouraging the BIOS/Firmware was updated. Cons: I read another reviewer unhappily returned his server because it was much older than expected, 9 years. I also expected one around 5-6 years since I paid a premium. Based on my experience working on Dell and HP servers, 9 years is like high mileage. I did not expect such an aged machine from Amazon. This is not Ebay, however, the machine is still working fine. I hope prospective buyers will find this information helpful.

Absolutely no issues. Took me a few minutes to get into the system. Default passwords for iDRAC (root/calvin) Was exactly as described. No damage that I saw, passed all the tests. Running beautifully. One thing I wasn't expecting (but was pleasantly surprised) was it having iDRAC enterprise licensing. The Windows Server 2016 installed was unlicensed, which is fine, as it had 180 days until it expired. This thing is great.