Dell PowerEdge generations

Dell's naming is more useful than it looks. Take an R740:

So an R640 is the 1U version of the same 14th-generation machine, an R650 is the 15th-generation 1U, and an R7515 is an AMD-based 2U. Once you can read the third digit you can date any machine in the range on sight, which is the single most useful thing to know about it.

The generations at a glance

The highlighted rows are where the money is. Anything from the 14th generation onward is straightforward for us to buy, and the 15th and 16th generations attract the strongest prices.

What each generation is actually like to sell

16th generation — R660, R760

Current-era hardware. DDR5, PCIe 5.0, and up to 56 cores per socket on 4th-generation Xeon Scalable or 64 on 5th generation. If you are releasing these it is usually because of a lease expiry or a project change rather than age, and they are worth a proper conversation. Configuration matters enormously at this end — the CPU and memory choices swing the figure more than the chassis does.

15th generation — R650, R750

Ice Lake, still DDR4. Very saleable: recent enough to be wanted, common enough to be easy to move. A well-specified R750 is one of the more valuable things likely to come out of a mainstream UK rack right now.

14th generation — R640, R740, R740xd

The workhorse. Enormous numbers were deployed between 2018 and 2022 and they are now coming off three- and five-year cycles in volume. Still strong demand, plentiful parts, and DDR4 is cheap enough that people are happy to expand them. The R740xd with its larger drive count is worth flagging separately if you have them — the extra bays matter.

13th generation — R630, R730, R730xd

The point at which value drops off noticeably. Still buyable and still useful machines, but you are into the part of the market where the memory and drives fitted may be worth more than the chassis. Populated ones are worth sending us; stripped bare ones much less so.

12th generation — R620, R720

DDR3 era, and now well past. We look at these case by case, generally where they are part of a larger mixed batch or particularly well populated. Send the list and we will tell you honestly whether they are worth collecting.

How to work out what you have

If the machines are still racked and reachable, in rough order of ease:

• The bezel or front label — the model is usually printed on the front, either on the plastic bezel or on the pull-out information tag on the front right of the chassis.
• The pull-out service tag — a small plastic tab on the front of the chassis carrying the seven-character Dell Service Tag. That code identifies the exact machine and its original configuration.
• iDRAC — the out-of-band management interface. The system summary page lists model, service tag, CPUs, memory and firmware in one place, and you can read it without touching the operating system.
• A photo — genuinely fine. Photograph the front tags and send them to us; we do this every day and can usually identify a rack from the pictures faster than you can type the list.

What to tell us for an accurate figure

Model and quantity gets you a ballpark. To get a firm per-unit figure, the useful extras are:

• CPU model and how many are fitted (one socket populated or two)
• Total memory, and ideally the module size making it up
• How many drives, what size and what interface — and whether they are staying with the machine
• Whether the caddies, rails and both PSUs are present
• Anything unusual: GPUs, high-end RAID controllers, extra network cards

You do not need all of that. Send what you have — a service tag list is enough for us to work most of it out.

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