Today we had a intriguing announcement from Dell EMC. The Dell EMC PowerEdge T40 is a single processor tower server meant for low-cost and low-power edge deployments. Its predecessor, the PowerEdge T30, is popular for home and SMB servers.
Dell EMC PowerEdge T40 Server Overview
The Dell EMC PowerEdge T40 is compact. It measures only 176.6 mm (6.95 inches) x 335 mm (13.18 inches) x 359.5 mm (14.15 inches.) That is a big selling point of the solution since it is small enough to place in valuable SMB offices, retail locations, and branch locations.
With this generation, you see new features such as the USB 3.1 Type-C port on the front of the chassis along with two USB 2.0 Type-A ports and a USB 3.0 port. Dell EMC is even supporting a front slim optical drive.
One key differentiator between the PowerEdge T40 and the higher-end Dell EMC PowerEdge T140 we reviewed is that the T40 does not have multiple NICs nor iDRAC. One can instead see a single 10/100/1000 Ethernet NIC. For enterprises looking to manage an edge server, this means that one needs to utilize Intel AMT for remote management, not the complete iDRAC suite.
In the rear of the system, one can see the four USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, and audio output. There are two DisplayPorts for running things like digital signage. One also has legacy I/O such as PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports and a serial console port. For a server released in 2019, still having PS/2 built-in seems remarkably backward-looking. Peripherals have moved well beyond PS/2.
Inside one can see room for up to three 3.5″ hard drives (two on the bottom, one on the top right of the above photo.) Some of Dell EMC’s documentation says four drives are possible. There is a single 300W 80Plus Bronze PSU.
PowerEdge T40 expansion slots are:
- PCIe Gen3 x16
- Legacy PCI
- 2x PCIe Gen3 x4 through the PCH
These are limited by the Intel Xeon E-2200 series, Core i3-9100 series, and Pentium Gold series CPU architectures. We do not see legacy PCI slots often these days as that 1990’s era standard started being superseded about 15 years ago. Still, some offices use older peripheral devices that absolutely require PCI slots, so they are still around in 2019-era servers.
For RAM, we like that Dell EMC is using a full set of four DDR4 ECC DIMM slots. Given the platform, it is limited to UDIMMs instead of RDIMMs found on higher-end servers built around the 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable series.
Final Words
What is interesting is that Dell EMC is launching the PowerEdge T40 ahead of Intel’s Xeon E-2200 series server launch. Intel has already announced the chips, but it has not, to date, allowed vendors to put them in servers, only workstations. You can check out our coverage on this line in Intel Xeon E-2100 and Xeon E-2200 Coverage from STH Your Guide.
The Dell EMC PowerEdge T40 is the first server out with the new chips, specifically the Intel Xeon E-2224G. You can even see SPEC CPU2017 results here. Years ago it was HPE that was able to launch machines before Intel CPUs, but now Dell is ahead of the curve.
At STH, we know our readers are frustrated waiting for the Intel’s server launch, and frustrated with this segmented launch. Our Editor-in-Chief, Patrick, has been pushing Intel to fix this two-tier launch.
The PowerEdge T40 is going to be popular as its predecessor T30 because it has a solid underpinning and Dell EMC does a great job driving the platform to lower price points.
First paragraph should read
“… its predecessor, the PowerEdge T30, …”
It looks exactly like the few years old Dell Precision 3630 workstation tower:
https://www.dell.com/en-ca/work/shop/workstations/precision-3630-tower/spd/precision-3630-workstation/xctopt3630usca
In a time where many SMB companies are ending their lease early on small equipment because they’re moving operations that were traditionally done on such a small groupware server to one of the many cloud providers is there really still a market segment for servers like this?
Maybe change the wording on network speeds. 10/100/1000GbE looks kinda confusing.
Thanks for the article.
Are you planning on doing a review of the new Xeon E eight-core CPUs sometime? Since the E-2278G and E-2288G are the new top models from that family, I’d love to see some benchmarks.
Christoph S – John will be doing this series once we get the go-ahead.
I have several Dell PE T30s which at $299 on sale was a great value. To me the new T40 isn’t as desirable based on reduced storage capacity. The T30 allowed you to mount many more drives especially if you were willing to augment the mounting points yourself. Also I see an M.2 slot in the picture, but I suspect it’s disabled in the bios. Assuming Dell remembered to disable it – with the T30 the M.2 slot was disabled after a bios update. I guess if they’ll sell the T40 for $299 on sale I’ll pick one up and see what it’s all about.
Are SBS really moving to the cloud? Most SBS are budget tight and dont think they want to spend $1-5K every month vs buying once a server like this for $1-2K.
Nail on the head, Tony.
T40 seems like a rebranded desktop machine. The interior is too crowded for my taste. By the size of the air holes it might run a little too hot too. I would stick with the cheaper, and more “server”, system T30.