HP ProLiant DL160 G9 1U rack server E5-2603 v3 32GB 2x 600GB SAS H240

1U Rack Server for Balanced Workloads

The HP ProLiant DL160 Gen9 fits a single Intel Xeon E5-2603 v3 six-core processor running at 1.6 GHz with 32 GB of DDR4 ECC memory installed across 16 DIMM slots. Two 600 GB 15 K 6 Gbps 2.5-inch SAS drives connect through a Smart HBA H240 controller supporting RAID 0, 1 and 5. A 550 W redundant hot-swap power supply is included and no operating system ships with the unit.

Sustained Load Behaviour with Single Processor

With one CPU populated the server offers six cores at a fixed 1.6 GHz base frequency, so throughput scales linearly without turbo bursts. The 32 GB DDR4 memory runs at up to 2400 MT/s depending on the processor capability and the 15 K SAS drives deliver consistent random I/O for database or virtualisation tasks. The H240 controller manages RAID parity calculations without a dedicated cache, so write-heavy sustained workloads rely on drive spindle speed rather than buffered acceleration.

Practical Limits of the SAS Interface

The Smart HBA H240 provides 12 Gbps SAS and 6 Gbps SATA connectivity across eight SFF drive bays, capping each SAS device at 6 Gbps with the installed drives. Maximum internal storage is therefore limited by the 2.5-inch bay count and the 6 Gbps per-port ceiling rather than the controller’s 12 Gbps wide port. Expanding beyond the two supplied drives adds capacity but does not increase per-drive bandwidth, and the single-processor configuration leaves half the memory channels and the second CPU socket unpopulated.