DELL PowerEdge R940 3U rack server 4x Xeon Gold 5120 2.2GHz 14-core 64GB DDR4 8x 1.2TB SAS H730P

Four-socket Xeon Gold server

The Dell PowerEdge R940 is a 3U rack server built for heavy multi-threaded workloads. Four Intel Xeon Gold 5120 processors deliver 14 cores each at 2.2 GHz with 3.2 GHz turbo. Sixty-four gigabytes of DDR4 registered ECC memory occupy four of forty-eight slots, leaving room for large-scale expansion. The platform targets databases, virtualisation clusters and analytics that demand high core counts in a compact rack footprint.

Storage and networking inside the 3U chassis

Eight 2.5-inch bays are populated with 1.2 TB 10K SAS drives connected to a PERC H730P controller supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 10, 50 and 60. Two 1600 watt platinum hot-swap power supplies provide redundancy without external units. A quad-port network daughter card adds two 1 GbE and two 10 Gb SFP+ links, while iDRAC9 Enterprise gives dedicated remote management. Rails and a front bezel are included for immediate rack integration.

Upgrade path from dual-socket

Moving from a two-socket system adds two more Xeon Gold 5120 CPUs, doubling thread capacity for parallel jobs. The forty-eight DIMM slots support up to 6 TB of DDR4, so memory-heavy applications can grow far beyond the installed 64 GB. Eight drive bays limit raw local storage, so workloads needing more capacity will require external arrays or a denser chassis. The four-socket maximum is already reached, so further CPU scaling means a different platform.