The bench notes
Server guides & buying advice
Model comparisons, platform explainers and configuration advice — written from the hardware we refurbish, test and ship every day.
Buying guide
Workstation or Server: Which One Do You Actually Need?
Core counts and memory capacity rarely decide this question. Redundancy, out-of-band management, acoustics, GPU support, and where the machine physically lives do. A practical framework, plus...
Buying guide
Dell Precision 7920 vs 7960: Two Generations of Big Iron
Both towers reach 56 cores ? one with two Xeon Scalable sockets, the other with a single Xeon W-3400. The difference lands in memory topology, PCIe...
Buying guide
Dell PowerEdge R740xd: Capacity Without the Compromise
The R740xd combines up to 32 drive bays, six memory channels per socket, and a dedicated M.2 boot device in one 2U chassis. Here is what...
Buying guide
Dell PowerEdge R730xd: The Storage Workhorse Explained
The R730xd is Dell's 13th-generation 2U storage chassis: up to 24 front SFF or 12 front LFF bays, 24 DIMM slots, and a controller choice that...
Buying guide
When a Gen9 Server Is Still the Smart Buy
HPE ProLiant Gen9 is a decade-old platform, but for disk-bound, memory-hungry, and non-per-core-licensed workloads it is still a rational purchase. Here is where it fits, where...
Buying guide
Dell 13th vs 14th Generation: Is the Jump Worth It?
Moving from PowerEdge 13G to 14G means a new socket, two extra memory channels per CPU, iDRAC9, and a different NVMe story. Here is where that...
Buying guide
Rack, Tower or Blade: Matching the Chassis to the Room
The chassis decision is usually made by the room, not the workload. Rack, tower and blade systems each assume something different about power, cooling, noise and...
Buying guide
1U vs 2U Servers: What You Give Up for Half the Height
A 1U chassis is 1.75 inches tall and a 2U is 3.5 inches, and that one dimension decides slot count, drive bays, heatsink height, and noise....
Buying guide
8SFF, 24SFF or 12LFF: How to Pick a Drive Bay Layout
Front bay layout is one of the few server decisions you cannot change without swapping the chassis. Here is how 8SFF, 24SFF and 12LFF differ in...
Buying guide
Dell R730 or HPE DL380 Gen9? A Straight Comparison
Same Xeon E5 v3/v4 silicon, same 24 DIMM slots, same PCIe 3.0. The choice between a PowerEdge R730 and a ProLiant DL380 Gen9 comes down to...
Buying guide
HPE DL360 Gen9 vs Gen10: The 1U Workhorse Compared
Both are 1U, two-socket ProLiants, but the socket, memory controller, NVMe support and management silicon are different. Here is what actually separates a DL360 Gen9 from...
Buying guide
Dell R630 vs R640: Choosing a 1U Compute Node
In 1U, memory bandwidth, thermal headroom and slot count decide the design. A side-by-side look at the Dell PowerEdge R630 and R640 and the workloads each...
Buying guide
HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 vs Gen10: What Actually Changed
The DL380 Gen9 and Gen10 look almost identical in the rack, but the socket, memory channels, storage controllers and management processor all changed. Here is what...