server

The Dell PowerEdge R930 is a 4U rack-mountable server featuring a quad-socket LGA-2011 motherboard. It can take E7-8800 v3, E7-8800 v4, E7-4800 v3, or E7-4800 v4 series processors. This system features eight memory risers. Two per processor. Each memory riser can hold 12 DIMMs. The risers will only address the memory if the accompanying processor is installed. Check the owner's manual in order to check which riser is associated with which processor. This system can address up to 96 sticks of 64GB dual rank RDIMMs at either 2400MHz or 2133MHz for a total of 6TB of memory. Alternately it can be installed with 128GB quad rank LRDIMMs for a total of 12TB of memory. With two added risers it can hold up to 10 PCIe devices. To use slots 6 through 10 all fours processors must be installed. It can come in a configuration with 4 2.5" hard drives or 24 2.5" hard drives. You may install up to 8 PCIe storage devices in the expansion slots in the back of the system. This system features four gigabit networking ports by default. E7 8800 v4 and E7-4800 v4 processors require BIOS revision 2.0 or higher to operate.

Overall this is an absolute beast of a machine. This single system alone can be filled with as much compute or memory or fast storage as many people's entire server rack from just two generations ago.

Dell PowerEdge T630 Tower Server

The Dell PowerEdge T630 is a Tower based server that has the ability to be converted into a rackmount server when a mounting bracket and rails are installed. It features a proprietary Dell motherboard which is run by an Intel C612 series chipset (Desktop Similar is the X99 Chipset). This allows for dual Haswell-EP (E5-2600 v3 series) processors or Broadwell (E5-2600 v4 series) processors (If BIOS revision 2.1.5 or newer is installed) and 24 slots for DDR4 RDIMMs or LRDIMMs

When running BIOS revision 2.1.5 or newer the maximum addressable memory for a single socket configuration is 1536GB with Quad or Octo Rank Load-Reduced DIMMs. With a dual processor configuration, this figure is doubled to 3072GB. This is using 24 of the recently released 128GB LRDIMMs. If using a revision older than 2.1.5 then the maximum addressable will be 768GB in a single socket configuration or 1536GB in a dual socket configuration. This is achieved using 24 64GB LRDIMMs. Of note, you cannot utilize 128GB DIMMs until the BIOS is updated and you may not use the memory slots assigned to a non-populated processor. To explain further, you cannot achieve the 768GB single processor maximum by using 24 32GB DIMMs because 12 of the slots are associated with the empty processor socket. The memory can operate at 2400MT/s in all configurations and ranks except for triple channel configurations. With RDIMMs the maximum then becomes 1866MT/s in triple channel and LRDIMMs can still operate at 2133MT/s in triple channel

There are many storage configurations for the Dell PowerEdge T630. One option is 32 2.5" drives without the flexbay or 18 2.5" with the flexbay.  Another option is 18 3.5" drives without the flexbay or 8 with the flexbay. The flexbay is essentially a riser card that allows the install of PCIe SSD cards in the front or additional hard drives or solid state drives.

There are a few known issues with the T630 that have been addressed with BIOS updates. The most major being users experiencing the red screen of death (RSOD) when using the E5-2603 or E5-2609 processors and performing a reboot. This was remedied in BIOS revision 2.1.5 so if you are using this configuration it is highly recommended you upgrade.