HP ProLiant DL160 Gen9 1U Rack Server E5-2603v3 1.6GHz 6C 32GB DDR4 2x 1TB SAS H240

ProLiant DL160 Gen9 1U rack server

The HP ProLiant DL160 Gen9 is a 1U rack server built for balanced compute and storage density. It ships with a single Intel Xeon E5-2603v3 six-core processor at 1.6 GHz and 32 GB of DDR4 ECC registered memory across 16 DIMM slots. The chassis holds up to eight 2.5-inch SAS drives and includes a Smart HBA H240 controller supporting RAID 0, 1 and 5. Dual 550 W hot-swap power supplies provide redundancy.

Sustained load behaviour with E5-2603v3

Under continuous workloads the six-core Xeon E5-2603v3 maintains its 1.6 GHz base frequency without turbo uplift. The 32 GB DDR4 memory runs at speeds determined by the processor capability, up to 2400 MT/s, delivering stable throughput for virtualisation or database tasks. Redundant 550 W power supplies and the 1U airflow design keep temperatures controlled during extended operation. The H240 controller handles steady SAS I/O at 12 Gb/s without thermal throttling.

Practical limits of the SAS interface

The Smart HBA H240 connects drives at 12 Gb/s SAS and 6 Gb/s SATA, capping sequential throughput to the controller’s lane bandwidth. With eight SFF bays populated the backplane shares aggregate bandwidth across all devices. RAID 5 rebuild times scale with drive capacity and the 7.2 K RPM rotational speed of the installed 1 TB SAS drives. Memory expansion stops at 32 GB per the supplied configuration, though the platform supports up to 1 TB with two processors.