s and 24 DDR4 DIMMs (or 12 NVDIMMs), but where they really shine is in the way they approach storage. While the R740 offers up to 16 storage bays, the xd offers up to 32 2.5” bays, 24 of which can be NVMe. The R740xd also offers some unique storage layouts versus the typical front-loading bays, including mid- and rear-loading bays to fit all the extra storage in the same 2U footprint. The layout enables users to tailor their storage needs to their application by being able to mix NVMe, SSD and HDD in the same chassis, creating storage tiering within the chassis. The R740xd also supports up to 192GB of NVDIMM. Moreover, the R740xd has the ability to boot from RAIDed internal M.2 SSDs through an add-on card, freeing up the more front-accessible space for workload storage. Both versions are good for SDS, service providers, and VDI, with total storage and NVMe being the key difference. Also new to the R740/R740xd is the increased support for GPUs or FPGAs.  Both are capable of support up to three 300W or six 150W cards.  In this generation, Dell EMC engineered the BIOS to automatically register the airflow required by each card and provide individually tailored air flow through a feature called multi-vector cooling.Dell EMC PowerEdge R740xd Server specifications:Form factor: 2U Rackmount

s: up to 2 Intel Scalable

s or up to 28 cores

: 24x DDR4 RDIMM, LR-DIMM (3TB max)NVDIMM support: up to 12 or 192GBDrive BaysFront bays:Up to 24 x 2.5” SAS/SSD/NVMe, max 153TBUp to 12 x 3.5” SAS, max 120TBMid bay:Up to 4 x 3.5” drives, max 40TBUp to 4 x 2.5” SAS/SSD/NVMe, max 25TBRear bays:Up to 4 x 2.5” max 25TBUp to 2 x 3.5” max 20TB

ControllersInternal controllers: PERC H730p, H740p, HBA330, Software RAID (SWRAID) S140Boot Optimized

Subsystem: HWRAID 2 x M.2 SSDs 120GB, 240 GBExternal PERC (RAID): H840External HBAs (non-RAID): 12 Gbps SAS HBA