HPE's equivalent of the R730-versus-R740 question, and it resolves the same way: a generation of platform against a meaningful price gap. The DL380 is the best-selling server line of its era, which is why both generations are abundant second-hand and why this comparison is worth doing carefully.
Prices updated
| ProLiant DL380 Gen9 | ProLiant DL380 Gen10 | |
|---|---|---|
| Generation | Gen9 | Gen10 |
| Platform | Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 / v4 | Intel Xeon Scalable (1st / 2nd generation) |
| Chassis height | 2U rack | 2U rack |
| Max documented bays | 24 | 24 |
| Documented configs | 4 | 4 |
| Chassis, live | $426 | $1,445 |
| Memory, cheapest $/GB | no verified profile | $4.31 |
| Remote management | iLO 4 separates a free Standard tier from the licensed tier that carries the Integrated Remote Console with virtual media — the remote-KVM behaviour buyers expect | iLO 5 keeps the same split: a free Standard tier, with the Integrated Remote Console and virtual media in the licensed tiers (Advanced and above) |
Prices are live from our catalogue. Where a chassis shows a band rather than a figure, we hold no verified Amazon listing for it and the range is a dated estimate rather than a quote.
The Gen9 runs Xeon E5-2600 v3 and v4; the Gen10 runs Xeon Scalable. As with the Dell pair, that generational step brings a newer memory subsystem with higher supported speeds, and as with the Dell pair it matters more for virtualisation than for storage.
The drive cage options differ in detail and it is worth reading them rather than assuming parity. HPE documents the Gen9 in 8 SFF, 24 SFF, 12 LFF and 4 LFF configurations, with a 6-NVMe option restricted to the SFF chassis. The Gen10's tables go further on both fronts: 24 SFF plus a rear cage, an LFF arrangement of twelve front with a mid-tray and rear cage, and NVMe support topping out considerably higher.
One Gen9 trap deserves repeating because HPE states it outright: the 4 LFF chassis cannot be upgraded to 12 LFF in the field. If you buy a four-bay machine intending to grow into a twelve-bay one, you have bought the wrong machine and no parts purchase fixes it.
The same dynamic as the Dell comparison applies here, and the table above shows it from our live catalogue rather than from list prices.
Note one asymmetry specific to this pair: we hold a verified memory compatibility profile for the Gen10 and not for the Gen9, because the two run different speed floors and mapping one to the other would assert support HPE does not document for the older machine. That is a gap in our data rather than a fact about the hardware - Gen9 memory is abundant and cheap - and it is flagged rather than hidden.
Both generations separate a free Standard tier from licensed tiers, and on both it is the Integrated Remote Console with virtual media - the feature that lets you install an operating system remotely - that sits behind the licence. That is the vendor position and it is consistent across the two.
The practical buying advice is identical to the Dell case: the hardware is present on every machine and the licence is not, the licence does not appear in a listing photograph, and a used unit may or may not carry an active one. Ask, in writing, before buying. Our licensing page covers what each tier includes.
The Gen9 is typically the cheaper machine by a wide margin, and for a storage-first build that gap is difficult to argue with. Twelve large-format bays is twelve large-format bays, and the drives you put in them cost the same either way.
The Gen10 earns its premium in two situations. If the machine is a virtualisation host, the newer platform and faster memory are worth having. And if you expect to run NVMe in hot-swap bays, the Gen10's tables support substantially more of it than the Gen9's six-drive option does. Outside those two cases, the Gen9 is the machine that leaves money for drives.
Whichever way this comparison goes, it is worth keeping the numbers in proportion. The gap between these two options is usually a couple of hundred dollars. Filling the machine with drives is usually several times that, and it is the same purchase either way.
That has a practical consequence for how you should weigh this decision. Agonising over the chassis while the drives dominate the budget is optimising the smaller line — and if the cheaper option leaves enough headroom for one more drive, that extra drive will change how the finished machine feels far more than the platform generation will. The exception is a build that is genuinely compute-bound rather than storage-bound, where the platform is the thing you are buying and the drives are incidental.
The other thing worth pricing before you commit is what the machine needs beyond the chassis: a carrier for every drive, and a storage controller that suits your filesystem. Neither is expensive individually and together they routinely add more than the price difference this page is about. Our build calculator prices the whole list for either option so you can compare finished machines rather than bare chassis, which is the comparison that actually matters.
On condition: recertified enterprise drives are the normal supply for builds like these and usually the right buy — 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 inherited powered-on hours. The table below shows condition alongside price so the comparison stays honest rather than floating used drives to the top as though they were equivalent to new ones. For a parity array, check the recording technology as well — no parity level rescues an array built on shingled drives.
8 in-stock listings · conventionally recorded, 3.5in, ranked by cost per terabyte · 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 |
| MDD 6TB SAS 12G 7200RPM MD6TSAS12872E | 6TB | SAS-12G | CMR | REFURB | $18.33 | $110 | Buy |
| HP 695842-001 4TB SAS 6G LFF 695842-001 | 4TB | SAS-6G | CMR | NEW | $19.67 | $79 | Buy |
ProLiant DL380 Gen9 buyer's guide · ProLiant DL380 Gen10 buyer's guide · Complete build guides · Price your own configuration · Where to buy
Other comparisons: PowerEdge R730 vs PowerEdge R740 · PowerEdge R630 vs PowerEdge R730 · 12-bay LFF vs 24-bay SFF
It depends on the workload, and the honest framing is that this is a budget question more than a capability one. The table above shows current chassis and memory costs from our live data. For storage-first builds the cheaper machine usually wins, because the drives cost the same either way and the money saved buys another one. For virtualisation the newer platform earns its premium.
Broadly yes, where the bay form factor matches. Both machines' SAS backplanes accept SATA drives as well as SAS, which is the fact that makes filling a used enterprise chassis affordable. What differs is which backplane configurations each was built in, and that is documented per model on their individual pages.
For a storage build, usually not. A pool of spinning disks is not waiting on memory bandwidth or platform generation, and the older machine leaves budget for drives. For a virtualisation host running many concurrent workloads, the newer platform and its faster memory are worth having. Buy the generation your workload actually notices.
We publish no decibel figures for any machine on this site, because we have not measured any and vendors do not state them for used configurations. What is consistent in owner reports is that 1U chassis are louder than 2U ones of the same era — small fans move air by spinning faster — and that hardware the management controller does not recognise raises the fan floor on all of them. That is community reporting and we label it as such. Our noise page covers the landscape and the mitigation options honestly.
The tiering model is the same across generations and vendors: the virtual console with virtual media, which is the feature that makes a machine administrable from elsewhere, sits behind the licensed tier rather than the free one. What varies is the interface generation. The buying advice does not change — ask the seller which tier is active on the specific machine, in writing, because it does not appear in a listing photograph.
Bay and backplane data comes from the vendors' own documentation — Dell technical guides and owner's manuals, HPE QuickSpecs, Lenovo setup guides — cited on each model's page. Prices come from our live catalogue and refresh every few hours. Anything drawn from community reporting rather than a vendor document is labelled as such, including the fan-behaviour observations, because a forum consensus and a specification are different kinds of claim.