PowerEdge R330 upgrade

Question

Hello,

At work I have a R330 ( Svc Tag removed by Moderator) Server

Xeon E3-1240 v5 3.5GHz, 8M cache, 4C/8T, turbo (80W)
8GB UDIMM, 2133MT/s, ECC
1TB 7.2K RPM SATA 6Gbps 3.5in
Chassis with up to 4, 3.5" Hot Plug Hard Drives and Embedded SATA
Single Hot Plug Power Supply 350W

I installed ESX 6.7 to USB flash drive but the hard disk transfer speed in a VM is miserable. I guess an esx supported dell raid controller would help.

Fedora 28 bare metal ~ 180MB /sec

Fedora 28 ESX VM ~ 30MB /sec

My question is how could the storage performance increased ?

- get raid controller, a longer cable for it and a 2 x 2.5 ssd drives ?

- is pci express card with nvme drives would be supported somehow ?

Thank you,

Andras

DELL-Young E · Answer

Hello thanks for choosing Dell and welcome to our community.

Please have a look at this link that may help you:

https://dell.to/3ysqvsk

Up to 8 x 2.5" SAS/SATA (HDD), max 30.7TB

Up to 4 x 3.5" SAS/SATA (HDD/ SSD), max 56TB

UDIMM 64GB

Intel® Xeon® processor E3-1200 v6 product family with up to 4 cores

Intel® Core i3® i3 processor with up to 2 cores

ntel® Pentium® processor with up to 2 cores

ntel® Celeron® processor with up to 2 cores

Should you have any further questions, let us know.

Respectfully,

DELL-Josh Cr · Answer

Hi,

The H730 is the fastest performing controller that was validated on this server. It does not have NVMe support for PCIe. Unfortunately, we do not offer an upgrade kit for the controller with the necessary cables.

andraskende · Answer

Josh,

Are any H730 pci express card should work on this R330 or there are specific version / part number required ?

Is the H730P would work as being compatible ? any H730P version would work has to match the part number?

Is the cable is Y40VF ?

Also I heard that servers that are configured and purchased with Embedded SATA are bound to that configuration and can’t be changed down the road to a PERC controller. ?

Thank you

Andras

Pakey Dev · Answer

What are the current maximum hardware specifications for upgrading a Dell PowerEdge R330 server? I'm particularly interested in the highest supported CPU, maximum RAM capacity, and maximum storage configuration available as of 2024. Any information on compatible parts or recent upgrades would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Pakey Dev · Answer

@DELL-Young E​ link is not working anymore. Can you send the correct link again? Thanks

DELL-Young E · Answer

Hello Pakey Dev, I am not 100% sure either as I don't see the link myself either but given the context, I'm assuming the link would have been most likely about the memory configuration?

https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-us/poweredge-r330/r330_om/system-memory?guid=guid-5e515254-d16b-4546-b71b-6a45173d1318&lang=en-us

Let me know if you have any further questions related to this. You are more than welcome to start your own thread.

We wish you all the best in 2026. Once again, thanks for choosing Dell.

Respectfully,

PowerEdge Hardware General

PowerEdge R330 upgrade

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