Technical specifications
Dell PowerEdge R540 — Full Technical Specifications
The R540 is the storage-capable member of Dell's fourteenth-generation rack line — two sockets, a taller chassis and a lot of bays, without the expansion the flagship carries. It went into file servers, backup targets and branch virtualisation hosts, and it is still one of the better value ways to hold a large amount of spinning storage in a cabinet.
A new build and refurbished units are both listed.
Official datasheet
Original spec sheet © Vendor. Hosted by hardwaresys for buyer reference. Specifications subject to vendor’s published documentation.
Full Specifications
The bay row is why anyone is on this page, so start there: the large-format build holds a great deal and the small-format one holds more still, and neither converts to the other later. Read the controller row next, because a drive count like this is only useful with a controller that can rebuild an array in reasonable time. Memory tops out at half what the taller flagship of this generation takes, which is the trade being made and is fine for a machine that mostly moves data. Power is hot-swappable across the range, which for a storage server that nobody wants to power down is more important than the efficiency grade.
| CPU Sockets | 2 sockets (Intel Xeon Scalable 1st/2nd Gen, up to 28 cores/socket) |
| CPU Family | Intel Xeon Scalable (Skylake-SP/Cascade Lake) |
| Max RAM | up to 1TB (16 DIMM DDR4, up to 2666 MT/s) |
| DIMM Slots | 16 DDR4 slots |
| Drive Bays | Up to 14x 3.5" SAS/SATA (HDD/SSD) or 24x 2.5" |
| Storage Controller | PERC H330, H730P, H740P; S140 SW RAID; HBA330 |
| Network | 2x 1GbE LOM + optional OCP 3.0 |
| PSU | 550W/750W/1100W Platinum hot-swappable |
| Form Factor | 2U |
| Management | iDRAC9 with Lifecycle Controller |
| Dimensions | 86.8 x 434 x 703.8 mm, ~29.7 kg |
Looking to buy this configuration?
We source this chassis OEM-new or refurbished, QC-inspected and shipped door-to-door. Quote-only pricing.