Can I really swap CPU and RAM between my Dell R730 servers?

Can I really swap CPU and RAM between my Dell R730 servers? I wrote about that recently.

Sure. It might just work. First, let’s look at the service tags and find out.

I have four Dell R730 servers in the basement:

r730-01 – main development server – contains 2x E5-2650L v3 : add some RAM from r730-04 and swap in the CPUs (E5-2699V3) from r730-02 – 9ZJ1282 – 591-BBCH : PowerEdge R730/R730xd Motherboard
r730-02 – unused – 1W5CXM2 – 329-BCZK : PE R730/xd Motherboard MLK
r730-03 – main storage server – 1W69XM2 : a pair of E5-2699 v3 @ 2.30GHz
r730-04 – unused – 1ZSS182

The service tags are shown above.

Looking into https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/servicetag I can locate the part numbers of the main boards:

Let’s look up the two main boards:

r730-01 – 591-BBCH
r730-02 – 329-BCZK
r730-03 – 329-BCZK
r730-04 – 591-BBCH

So we have two matches. I’m positive the RAM from 04 can be installed into 01.

Comparing the CPUs

This URL compares the CPUs I want to swap.

They have the same socket (FCLGA2011)
They use the same Memory Types (DDR4 1600/1866/2133)

I found a Dell Community post – the screen shot below shows the relevant information:

But wait, there’s more, but not really. Reading Dell PowerEdge R730 Owner’s Manual, I learn:

Processor specifications
The PowerEdge R730 system supports up to two Intel Xeon E5-2600 v3 or Intel Xeon E5-2600 v4 product family processors.

That tells me I can swap the CPUs. Some of you might wonder: OK, why keep going? To be sure. All the data points are accumulating and it looks to be a safe thing to do.

What HBA?

All four hosts contain a 405-AAEH : PERC H730P RAID Controller, 2G B NV Cache, Mini card.

In r730-01, that’s:

AVAGO MegaRAID SAS FreeBSD mrsas driver version: 07.709.04.00-fbsd
mrsas0: <AVAGO Invader SAS Controller> port 0x3000-0x30ff mem 0x92600000-0x9260ffff,0x92500000-0x925fffff irq 26 at device 0.0 numa-domain 0 on pci3

In r730-03, that is:

AVAGO MegaRAID SAS FreeBSD mrsas driver version: 07.709.04.00-fbsd
mrsas0: <AVAGO Invader SAS Controller> port 0x2000-0x20ff mem 0x92000000-0x9200ffff,0x91f00000-0x91ffffff irq 26 at device 0.0 numa-domain 0 on pci3