Dell PowerEdge R650 vs R450 Server Comparison

Posted by Ryan Brown on Sep 14, 2021

Summary of Server Differences

The Dell PowerEdge R650 is a very popular server, but the R450 deserves consideration for many average users.

Both servers are from the new 15 ^th generation Dell family so they have the upgraded CPUs compared to their 14^th gen counterparts. Intel’s new line of v3 scalable CPUs are pretty impressive. Leading CPU benchmarking source, Passmark, has the relatively low-end 15 ^th gen v3 CPU, the Intel 4310, with a CPU rating 50% higher than the equivalent 14 ^th gen v2 processor, the Intel 4214. When you look at the gold processors of the v3 family, they often out score the platinum v2 CPUs. You can see a prime example of that by checking out the 6348 and 8280. The platinum v3 CPUs do a good job of pushing the core count to 40 cores per CPU. However, if cores really do matter for you, I would look at Dell R6515 and R6525 with AMD CPUs.

Click here to view a full comparison of the Intel CPUs.

If NVMe drives are a consideration, the R650 is only choice of these two servers. And you will be excited to know that Dell has added NVMe hardware RAID capabilities to the R650 via the H755 or H755N RAID cards.

Both the R650 and R450 support 4 x 3.5” drives, but the R450 is limited to 8 x 2.5” (10 x 2.5” + 2 rear 2.5” on the R650). Beyond traditional drives, both servers support one of the most exciting features, the BOSS 2.0 card. The 14 ^th generation introduced the BOSS card as an upgrade to putting your OS on SD cards. The 15^th generation improves on that by allowing you access to the drives from the rear instead of having to open the server and they are hot swappable.

Memory is also limited on the R450. Only 16 DIMM slots versus the massive 32 DIMM slots on the R650. It’s not just quantity that is different. The R450 only supports RDIMMs which limits it to a max of 64GB per DIMM (1TB total for the server) instead of the R650 which supports LRDIMMs with up to 256GB per DIMM (4TB total for the server).

There is also no GPU support on the R450. The R650 allows for up to 3 of any 75W single width GPU. More and more applications are starting to make use of GPUs, so it is good to see that in the 1U chassis. Maybe we will see crypto miners starting to snatch up these servers.

While there are benefits to the R650, many companies could use the R450 without sacrificing anything. All these potential upgrades do come at a little price increase. As of the writing of this comparison, the R650 starts at about $500 more than a comparable R450. You also save a couple hundred dollars on warranty if you need anything beyond ProSupport (ProSupport Plus, Mission Critical).

If you do not need the upgrades and want to save your IT budget, you could also check out Dell Certified Refurbished servers from xByte. Either way, contact xByte before your next IT project to understand what options you have.

Dell PowerEdge R650

General Server Details:

CPU(s): Up to 2 x Intel Xeon SP Multi Core
Memory: 32 DDR4 DIMM Slots (Max 4TB)
RAID: PERC H745, H345, HBA355I, H755, H755N
HDD: 3.5" and 2.5" Hot Swap SAS, SATA and Near Line SAS, NVMe SSD
RISER: 3 PCIe Slots (Half Height) or 2 PCIe Slots (1 Full Height, 1 Half Height)
Power: 800W & 1400W Platinum or 1100W Titanium Hot Swap Redundant

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