R740 and DL380 Gen10 are the twin workhorses of the previous enterprise generation. Millions of units shipped between 2017 and 2023. Both now sit in the refurb sweet spot — mature, well-understood, still supported by the OEM, abundant parts availability. The decision here is rarely about raw specs; it is about which ecosystem your operations team already speaks.
At a glance
| Spec | PowerEdge R740 | ProLiant DL380 Gen10 |
|---|---|---|
| Generation | 14G (Dell) | Gen10 (HPE) |
| CPU sockets | 2 | 2 |
| Max memory | 3TB DDR4 | 3TB DDR4 |
| Drive bays | 16 SFF | 24 SFF |
| End of sale | 2023-10-31 | 2025-03-31 |
| End of support | 2028-12-31 | 2029-10-31 |
| Lifecycle | end of sale | end of sale |
| Remote management | iDRAC 9 Enterprise | iLO 5 Advanced |
| RAID family | PERC H730/H740P/H750/H755 | Smart Array P408/P816/MR416i-p/MR216i-p |
| OEM support plan | ProSupport / ProSupport Plus (4-hour mission-critical) | Foundation Care / Proactive Care (24×7 Call-to-Repair) |
Platform and silicon
R740 runs Intel Xeon Scalable Gen1/Gen2 (Skylake-SP, Cascade Lake) with 24 DDR4-2666/2933 DIMM slots, max 3TB memory, PCIe Gen3. DL380 Gen10 is identical CPU family, same DDR4 generation, 24 DIMM slots, also 3TB ceiling, also PCIe Gen3. In pure silicon terms these are sister platforms — same Intel reference design, different chassis engineering. Benchmarks within 3-5% for traditional workloads.
BMC and remote management: iDRAC 9 Enterprise vs iLO 5 Advanced
iDRAC 9 Enterprise (R740) and iLO 5 (DL380 Gen10) both expose Redfish, both support virtual-media, both do serial-over-LAN. iDRAC has a slightly cleaner SupportAssist integration with Dell’s phone-home telemetry. iLO 5 pairs with HPE InfoSight which now backfills analytics across HPE hardware globally. If your monitoring stack is Prometheus + Redfish-exporter, you will not notice the difference in day-two work.
Storage and RAID
Both offer 8, 16, or 24 SFF configurations. PERC H730/H740P on R740; Smart Array P408i/P816i on DL380 Gen10. Both are Broadcom/LSI-based silicon internally, different firmware customizations. Hot-spare rebuild times are close. RAID 6 write performance marginally favors HPE Smart Array in our bench testing with spinning media. NVMe SSDs are supported on both but Dell’s NVMe-over-PCIe cabling is neater on R740 late-production units.
Firmware and tooling ecosystem
Dell DSU vs HPE SPP — same story as Gen11/R750. Both ship once a quarter with consolidated firmware bundles. Both pass the compliance audits (PCI-DSS, HIPAA). Driver freshness for RHEL and ESXi is on par. The real operational difference shows up in fleet management at 50+ servers, where OpenManage Enterprise and HPE OneView diverge in API maturity (OneView is stronger for policy-driven provisioning; OME is stronger for firmware-cadence reporting).
Total cost of ownership: 3-year and 5-year horizons
Refurb pricing today (Apr 2026): R740 full-config lands at $2,200-$3,400 USD. DL380 Gen10 runs $2,400-$3,800 USD — HPE carries a slight refurb premium because the brand is perceived as more available in EMEA. Memory, drives, and PSU costs are parity within 5%. OEM support on refurb: Dell ProSupport $400-$600/year, HPE Foundation Care $500-$700/year. ICD Care+ handles both at $550-$750/year with faster dispatch than either OEM in Egypt and GCC.
Refurb market reality
Both platforms have the deepest refurb inventory in the market. ICD alone carries thousands of compatible parts across both. Delivery lead time is 0-2 days in Cairo, 3-5 days in GCC. Whole-server refurb lead time is 5-10 days depending on config. If you need 20 servers tomorrow, both R740 and DL380 Gen10 can deliver.
Third-party maintenance vs OEM renewal
OEM renewal economics on a 6-7-year-old platform collapse fast — Dell and HPE both raise support pricing 8-12% annually on aging gear. ICD Care+ pricing stays flat because our support model is inventory-backed not license-backed. At 5-year mark, most customers pay 2-3x OEM renewal cost for OEM Extended; ICD delivers the same response SLA at roughly 40% of that.
When PowerEdge R740 is the right call
Pick R740 when: your VMware cluster is already Dell; your OS baseline images assume iDRAC; you have Dell rack/cable assets; your sales channel gives Dell a 5-10% advantage on refurb pricing today.
When ProLiant DL380 Gen10 wins
Pick DL380 Gen10 when: HPE is your incumbent; you need Smart Array’s specific behavior on RAID 60 with spinning media; your NOC has iLO dashboards built out; HPE Networking is already in the rack.
ICD stock today
PowerEdge R740: 591 Dell memory SKUs; 2961 SSD SKUs; 5623 HDD SKUs; 936 RAID controller SKUs; 128 PSU SKUs.
ProLiant DL380 Gen10: 1353 HPE memory SKUs; 4724 SSD SKUs; 4288 HDD SKUs; 1167 RAID controller SKUs; 34 PSU SKUs.
Both platforms ship from our Cairo warehouse with same-day dispatch on in-stock parts. Cross-reference sheets, firmware bundles, and compatibility checks come free with every quote. Need parts for both sides of a mixed estate? One ICD quote covers every brand you run.
Related: PowerEdge R740 parts catalog | ProLiant DL380 Gen10 parts catalog | ICD Care+ single-vendor-agnostic support.