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
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
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...
refurbished servers
Dell Precision T7920: Dual-Socket Desk Power
The T7920 is server silicon in office clothing: two Xeon Scalable sockets, 24 DIMM slots and space for serious GPUs, engineered to whisper. What the platform...
Server hardware
GPU in a Workstation or GPU in a Server?
The same accelerator lives two very different lives in a Z8 under a desk versus a 2U in a rack. Cooling, noise, power connectors and multi-user...
Business Server
Preparing for Colocation: A Checklist
Colo hands you power, cooling and a network drop - everything else is preparation. Remote management, boot resilience, labeling, spares strategy and the day-one checklist that...
Buying guide
Power Draw in Practice: What a Server Costs to Run
Idle watts, not peak watts, decide the electricity bill - and configuration moves them more than generation does. Real-world draw figures by chassis and build, the...
Performance optimization
The 10GbE Upgrade Path: NICs, Switches and Reality
Gigabit is the bottleneck hiding under most storage complaints. What 10GbE actually changes, the used NICs worth buying (X520, X710, ConnectX), switch options that stopped being...
Server hardware
Adding a Disk Shelf: JBODs and Enclosures
When the bays run out, the answer is a shelf: a dumb enclosure of drives cabled to the server's SAS card. How JBODs work, what D3610-class...