This is the parts-list view of a build we cover in depth elsewhere: a used two-socket machine bought primarily for the quantity of cheap ECC memory it can hold, so that large model files fit at all. This page prices the whole parts list live: a PowerEdge R730 in its 8 x 3.5in LFF configuration, 4 drives and 4 carriers, and 256 GB of ECC memory.
Prices updated
Both halves of this are live prices, so the total is a real figure rather than an estimate — but it still excludes processors (which arrive fitted and which we do not price), rails and cables.
Twenty-four DIMM slots and the cheapest DDR4 on the second-hand market. The R730 is the volume machine of its generation, which means both the chassis and the memory for it are abundant and inexpensive - and memory capacity, not storage and not the chassis, is what this build is actually buying.
Full bay configurations, chassis pricing, noise and management-licensing detail for this machine are on the PowerEdge R730 buyer's guide, and what fits each backplane is on its drive compatibility page.
Every table below is live. Where a part class has nothing in stock the table says so rather than quietly disappearing, because a parts list with a silent gap is worse than one with an admitted one.
We hold 1 verified Amazon listing for this machine. Read the configuration in the title rather than the model number — two machines with the same model can differ several-fold in price on processors, memory and how many carriers are included.
| Premium Dell PowerEdge R730 16 Bay SFF Server, 2X Intel Xeon E5-2620 V3 2.4GHz 6… | $499 | Refurb | Buy |
6 in-stock listings · 4 needed for this build · ranked by live cost per tb, refreshed every few hours
| Drive | Capacity | Interface | Recording | Condition | $/TB | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HP 695842-001 4TB SAS 6G 695842-001 | 4TB | SAS-6G | CMR | NEW | $14.00 | $56 | Buy |
| HP ST31000640SS 1TB SAS ST31000640SS | 1TB | SAS-6G | CMR | REFURB | $14.99 | $15 | Buy |
| HGST HUS724030ALS640 3TB SAS 6G HUS724030ALS640 | 3TB | SAS-6G | CMR | REFURB | $15.13 | $45 | Buy |
| Seagate 3TB Enterprise Capacity SAS 6G ST3000NM0023 | 3TB | SAS-6G | CMR | REFURB | $17.98 | $54 | Buy |
| HGST HUS726040ALS210 4TB SAS 12G HUS726040ALS210 | 4TB | SAS-12G | CMR | REFURB | $18.13 | $73 | Buy |
| Dell NWCCG 6TB SAS 6G NL Renewed NWCCG | 6TB | SAS-6G | CMR | REFURB | $18.33 | $110 | Buy |
Conventional recording only. A shingled drive in a parity array turns a rebuild that should take hours into one that takes days, and the array is at its most vulnerable for the whole of that window — see our CMR drive list. For condition, recertified enterprise drives are the normal supply for a build like this; our recertified guide covers what the grades mean.
4 in-stock listings · 4 needed · ranked per caddy, not per pack · ranked by price per unit, not pack price · refreshed every few hours
| Listing | Pack | Pack price | Per caddy | Condition | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Pack 3.5" SAS SATA Hard Drive Tray Caddy Replacement for Dell PowerEdge | 5× | $33.99 | $6.80 | NEW | Buy |
| DRIVECADDY 3-Pack 3.5" LFF Caddy Tray - fits Dell PowerEdge 17-14th Gen | 3× | $23.00 | $7.67 | NEW | Buy |
| 2.5 to 3.5 Hard Drive Adapter 9W8C4 Y004G WWGPK SSD Bracket Adapter Compatible… | single | $7.99 | $7.99 | NEW | Buy |
| 3.5" HDD Drive Tray Caddy Replacement for Dell G14 G15 POWEREDGE R640 R740 R74… | single | $9.29 | $9.29 | NEW | Buy |
At $6.80 per carrier, filling 4 bays costs about $27 — a line most people leave out of the budget entirely, and one of the two reasons a cheap chassis turns out not to be cheap. Compatibility, part-number provenance and what to check on arrival are on the Dell 13th/14th generation 3.5" LFF page.
Memory capacity is the entire point of this build. What you can hold in system memory determines which model files you can load at all, and used DDR4 for this platform is the cheapest large-capacity ECC memory available anywhere. 256 GB is the figure this parts list plans around because the platform's 24 DIMM slots make it reachable cheaply; it is a capacity target, and this page makes no claim whatsoever about how fast anything runs.
| Module | Price | $/GB | For 256GB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A-Tech 64GB LRDIMM | $276 | $4.31 | 4 × = $1104 | Buy |
| A-Tech 16GB RDIMM | $72 | $4.53 | 16 × = $1160 | Buy |
| Samsung 32GB RDIMM | $149 | $4.65 | 8 × = $1192 | Buy |
| SK Hynix 64GB RDIMM | $305 | $4.76 | 4 × = $1220 | Buy |
The cheapest route to 256 GB right now is 4 × 64 GB modules at about $1,104. Populate the slots in the order the vendor documents — a badly populated configuration runs slower than the parts you paid for, and on these platforms that is a real effect rather than a rounding error. Full compatibility rules and population guidance: memory for the R730 · memory finder
Rails are the part nobody remembers until the machine is on the floor and the rack is on the wall. We do not track rail kits and we are not going to quote a part number for one, because rail kits are chassis-generation and rack-depth specific and a wrong kit is a bulky, expensive return. Ask the seller whether rails are included — many listings include them and many do not, and it is a question worth one line before purchase.
We also do not price processors. Used servers overwhelmingly arrive with them fitted, so the chassis figure above is for a configured machine; read the listing to see which are in it. If you intend to upgrade later, price that separately, because we have no data to offer you there and inventing a figure would be worse than admitting the gap.
This page is a parts list. The reasoning behind this build - what a large-memory used server is genuinely good for, what it is not, and why we publish no performance figures for it - lives on our budget inference rig guide, which remains the canonical page for the subject. We are not repeating that argument here, and if you have arrived at this page first you should read that one before buying anything.
The short version, so that this page is not misleading on its own: system memory capacity determines how much model you can hold outside of VRAM, and that is a capacity fact. Used enterprise servers are the cheapest route to large quantities of ECC memory by a wide margin, and that is a price fact we can show with live data. Whether the result is pleasant to use is a question we deliberately do not answer, because it depends entirely on your workload and anyone answering it confidently without that information is guessing.
The storage side of this build is deliberately modest. Four bays of conventional drives is enough to hold a model library and an operating system, and spending the budget on drives rather than DIMMs would be spending it on the thing that is not the constraint.
Read this first: the budget inference rig guide is the canonical page for this build and sets out what it is and is not good for.
Price your own variant in the build calculator · Where to buy the chassis · What to check when it arrives · The other build guides · Add 10GbE to this build
We publish it as two numbers rather than one, because only part of it is a live price. The parts we track - drives, carriers, memory - currently sum to $1,355. The chassis is a live Amazon listing at $499. That puts a realistic total at $1,854. Collapsing an estimate band into a single figure would invent precision we do not have.
No, and that is a deliberate gap. We do not track CPU prices, so quoting one would mean making a number up. Used servers overwhelmingly arrive with processors already fitted, which is why the chassis figure above is for a configured machine rather than a bare board - read the listing to see which processors are in it. If you intend to upgrade them later, price that separately.
This build fills 4 of the chassis's bays, so the parts list prices 4 drives and 4 carriers. Empty bays keep their blanks rather than sitting open, because the cooling design assumes the airflow path stays closed. If you plan to fill fewer bays now and grow later, scale both numbers together - and buy carriers in the multi-pack size that matches the final count, because per-unit price falls sharply with pack size.
Not necessarily. This build does not depend on the filesystem seeing raw disks, so whatever controller arrived in the machine is likely fine. If you later decide to run ZFS on it, that changes - see our IT mode guide for which cards present drives directly and which do not.
Almost certainly, and most people building this should. Recertified enterprise drives are the normal supply for a build like this - the same drives at a fraction of the price, typically rated for a higher duty cycle than the consumer drives they undercut. What you trade is warranty length and the powered-on hours you inherit. The drive table above shows condition alongside price so the comparison stays honest rather than floating used drives to the top as though they were equivalent.
No. We price hardware and link the platforms' own documentation for installation, because their docs are maintained and ours would not be. What this page is for is the shopping list and the arithmetic - which parts, how many, what they cost today, and where the number is an estimate rather than a quote.