Dell PowerEdge T640 vs T560 — Tower Server Comparison
First clarification worth making because “T650” is a common mistype or market confusion: Dell does not produce a T650. The 15G tower was the T550; the 16G tower is the T560. Most queries for “T640 vs T650” are really asking “what is the modern replacement for the T640 tower?” — that is the T560. This guide answers the real question.
Side-by-side
| Attribute | T640 (14G) | T560 (16G) |
|---|---|---|
| Released | July 2017 | September 2023 |
| Form factor | 5U Tower | 5U Tower |
| Deployment | Tower or rack-converted (with rail kit) | Tower or rack-converted |
| CPU | Xeon Scalable Gen 1/2 | Xeon Scalable Gen 4/5 |
| Max cores/socket | 28 | 64 |
| DIMM slots | 24 | 16 |
| Max memory | 3TB DDR4 | 4TB DDR5 |
| Memory type | DDR4-2933 | DDR5-4800/5600 |
| PCIe | Gen 3 | Gen 5 |
| Drive bays | 8-32 SFF / 8-18 LFF | 8-16 SFF / 8 LFF |
| RAID | PERC H330/H730P/H740P | PERC H965i / HBA465i |
| PSU | 495W–1600W | 800W–1800W Titanium |
| OEM | EOS 2023-10-31, EOSL 2028-12-31 | Active |
Where tower still wins
Tower form factor makes sense in three situations. First: branch offices and retail stores where no rack exists and noise / thermal is a quiet-room concern. Second: lab/education/R&D environments where one-to-few deployment and walk-up access matter. Third: storage-heavy SMB servers where the tower’s 18 LFF or 32 SFF bay count beats any rack 2U at a similar price point.
T640 shipped in this role across Egyptian SMB, university labs, and Gulf branch-office rollouts from 2017 onward. T560 continues the line with current-gen silicon and DDR5.
The memory slot count reality
T640 has 24 DIMM slots — same as a full-spec R740. Memory ceiling is 3TB.
T560 has 16 DIMM slots — 33 % fewer. Memory ceiling is 4TB (using DDR5’s higher per-DIMM density), but at fewer channels per workload slice the practical bandwidth win over T640 is smaller than the pure DDR5 numbers suggest.
T640 memory PNs: 1VRGY, CG17D, D715X, 370-ADVZ, 370-ADWK, 370-AEOI.
T560 memory PNs: AC239377, AC239378, AC239379, AC448843.
Drive bay configurations
T640: 8, 16, 24, or 32 SFF front (with optional mid-plane + rear); or 8–18 LFF. The 18 LFF tower is a storage beast at USD 3,500–5,500 refurb — beats any 2U rack on sheer capacity per node.
T560: 8, 16 SFF or 8 LFF — lower absolute bay count than T640. Dell’s density strategy moved to E3.S NVMe on the rack side; the tower chassis emphasises CPU/memory capability over bay count.
Storage PN samples — T640-class: 01H3H, 028J2, 04KPG for 3.5″, 0184M, 01Y7M, 03VVP for 2.5″ SAS SSD. T560-class NVMe: 08M01, 0D4GH, 0HVC7.
CPU-bound work
64 cores per socket on T560 (Platinum 8592+ / 6548Y+) absolutely demolishes the T640’s 28-core ceiling. For compute-heavy workloads — render farms, HPC nodes, big-batch ETL — the T560 is simply a different class of machine. The catch: those workloads are rare in tower form factor. Most teams running that kind of compute moved to rack / blade years ago.
Storage-bound work
T640 with 18× 14TB LFF drives is 252TB raw. T640 with 32× 3.84TB SFF SSD is 122TB raw high-IOPS. Both configurations are production-proven. T560 tops at 16 bays — capacity ceiling is roughly half.
Power
T640: 495W / 750W / 1100W / 1600W redundant. T560: 800W to 1800W Titanium. Efficiency advantage goes to T560 at sustained load; T640 PSUs are platinum-class, still respectable.
Stocked PSU PNs: 1JDDV, 1Y45R, 38GYJ, 095HR5, 685W7, 95HR5 (T640 domain), plus T560 high-end on request.
RAID / storage controllers
T640: PERC H330, H730P, H740P, HBA330. T560: PERC H965i / H965e / HBA465i (PERC 12 family). Tri-mode with NVMe native RAID on T560.
PERC PNs: 14G-class 04M4C, 0878M, 0DXN6, 0N54P; 16G-class 2PG59, 3KWJN, 4G20M, 5Y1HD.
ICD recommendation
- SMB / branch office / retail running a file + mail + domain controller load on one box → T640 refurb (USD 1,500–3,000), still supported through 2028.
- University lab or R&D environment needing current-gen silicon → T560 new or refurb.
- Dense tower storage (18 LFF) → T640 is the best-price answer; no modern successor at that bay count.
- CPU-heavy on-prem compute in a quiet room → T560 for the 64-core ceiling.
ICD ships towers across Egypt (Cairo + Mohandseen branches), GCC, and North Africa. Open an RFQ specifying the tower role and we will spec the right chassis within the working day.