You'd need to buy a house/shed/garage/conservatory for that kind of nonsense.

Will earn more heat if you beef out the specs. It is a quad core processor after all.

Els where being sold for more than £300

Afaik the cashback is not automatic and so you have to pay for this (+ delivery) and then put in a claim for cashback, meaning it's a lot more than "£174.89 delivered"
http://www.serversplus.com/content.asp?pageid=220

Even without cash back its the cheapest I have seen.

What's the noise like on these ?

Does this come with Windows?

Does it have RAID?

If you have an old server to trade in you could potentially get £150 trade in for it against the T20
https://plus.delltradetosave.com/gb/en/pages/home
The caveat being the trade in server must be less than 6 years old and have a minimum of 250gb storage.

This on a par with the Lenovo ts140?

Ubuntu, ubuntu, U don't know what they've done 2 u ...
For 170q its good price..

That's very good, I have a couple of microservers needing a home - can you also get the £70 cashback?

Was thinking about trading in my old Microserver as well but after reading the terms and conditions I'm not sure its worth it.
T&Cs state - cannot be combined with other offers and also the max. cash back is 50% of the original purchase price.

That does look interesting! The original N36L micro server should fit the bill, and it's 250GB stock. Would really need to know if itait's accepted though..

Great little server/desktop. Can confirm that this works well with a 750ti making it a great little machine for casual game < £300 after cashback :smiley: yes the psu is able to drive them with no difficulties.

Noise is a issue if you are using it as a server, Im still happy with my N54 its served me proud and still does everything i need it to do so no point in a upgrade and i really dont feel like taking my server of line to do a upgrade.

Surely this cant be right how many drives can this hold
Maximum storage capacity 13 TB

if is e3 1230

3x4tb + the 1tb included? Would of thought max storage would be 16tb

Intel Xeon E3-1225 v3 - LINK.

Comments from when this was posted a month ago:

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/dell-t20-server-xeon-e3-1225v3-4gb-1tb-245-88-inc-servers-plus-175-88-after-70-cashback-2286353

I did buy one of these on this deal and have had it running for a few weeks now, very quiet and I'm impressed with it. Put a 750Ti in it to test and it worked fine, well worth it for the money I think :smiley:

Can I swap the PSU out of this for a EVGA 750W ?

Got this such a shame no drac/ilo like the hp ml115 g5 had.

Do you use one of these as server? What makes this a noisy server?

Just read a review that said this has 4x sata2 and 2xsata3 ?? Confused now ! I assume this does have sata3 - I am looking at this as a potential plex server and general desktop pc (and odd game) would want to add a ssd and another 4gb ram min - then add 750ti or something more powerful and better psu ! - currently this is cheaper than building my own but I ideally want to fit my liteon I has drive (360) but apparently this tower is for slim drives only ??? Surely not In a midi tower - pictures look likes it would fit behind the front panel and just the tray pops out ? Can anyone confirm this please

Also got to figure out how I am going to ship dell this hp Proliant ml350 gen5 to them (it's ruddy heavy)

REVIEW
4 Sata 10 usb
heavier than Adele

Would this be a useful upgrade for an HP Microserver N40L? I'm currently using mine as a Plex server and file storage, but it seems to struggle with higher quality blu ray rips

What are the other graphics card options? Other than 750Ti?

Ordered one on Thursday after seeing the last expired post, figured it had just been incorrectly expired so didn't re-post! Weird cashback terms though, you have to wait 30days to submit the claim, clearly hoping you forget! Why you can't submit the claim and then they hold it for 30days I have no idea.

Hmm, if I can trade in the microserver this could be useful. Would probably only get £50 for a well used n40l anyway. Are both offers through dell on this one, or their partners?

additional 4gb ram is £42

http://www.ebuyer.com/712453-dell-4-gb-certified-replacement-memory-module-a7303660

Ordered. Will make a great PLEX server. Reviews seem to suggest that it uses about 22W idle, and around 40-60W spun up, raising to 90W with a few hard drives in.

Good excuse, but that still doesn't explain why they can't just hold your claim for 30 days, then if there is a refund cancel your claim. Many cashback promotions don't pay within 30 days anyway so still have the ability to cancel in the event of a refund.

Am seriously considering this, but trying to work out if I can get cashback and trade in like the HP deals.

Saves them the hassle I guess.

Still think it is driven by the hope you'll forget. Assuming they validate every claim with the retailer, they could just wait until day 30 to run the validation, rather than doing it when you submit... So the work is the same for them regardless :smiley:

Anyway - the deal is still great, just make sure you put the 30-day date in your calendar!! I've ordered one for work to replace our extremely dated continuous integration server + a Crucial 16GB RAM upgrade.

Ordered, along with addtional 4gb stick from ebuyer for £25

http://www.ebuyer.com/616152-kingston-4gb-1600mhz-ddr3-ecc-single-rank-module-dell-server-ktd-pe316es-4g

just about to pull the trigger - yep you are completely right not together unlike the HP promo :disappointed:

Yeah, decided to hang fire for now. I don't need it (just want it!) so can wait to see if anything better comes along. I'd need to add RAM anyway so £200 is not a small impulse purchase.

My dilemma, I am running 3 dell r300 with quad core L5410's, 24GB ram as Esxi hosts in a home lab, each using around 120W. I have just acquired some Dell R710's 2x2.93 Hexa core, 64GB ram to replace, but these run at 180W upwards and I'm not sure I need all that grunt! The T20's run at 45W each fully loaded which is a big saving on the leccy but they are a pita to get working with Esxi 5.5, I will also need to purchase 12 sticks of 8GB ram to max them out (I take it they can't use r dimms?)which could be costly, decisions, decisions

Might not apply here, but I bought the Lenovo ts140 2 months ago (cashback just come thru), but serversplus was specifically discounted from the Lenovo cashback scheme. Probably something to do with the fact that serversplus was £100 cheaper than elsewhere (like this deal). Lenovos cash back was £125. Might be worth checking Dells fine print in the t&c`s. Hopefullly not the case here, but suggest checking.

That's great. Not looking to buy myself, but almost got caught out on the TS140 cashback. Only for reading the T&Cs on the Lenovo site did I find out. In fairness Serversplus weren't plugging the cashback on that deal.

taken the plunge, three of them coming my way tomorrow! Got the 5 year warranty on each too.

£863.64 delivered (free next day delivery)

P.S. Thanks OP & heated

could I buy this and use the CPU for my build? http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/YN3nD3

I have bought the necessary only CPU left. using for graphics and photo editing.

Nice price for a solid little server. Probably needs an extra 4GB RAM as Win Server 2012 is a bit of a resource hog, but that's not overly expensive.

Was tempted by the trade-in but I think my Dell Precision 690 server is more than 6 years old. :disappointed:

maybe, depends on your motherboard and it's list of compatible CPU's

do they use DPD can anyone recall?

The cpu is still socket 1150 so should be ok but it's locked. The i5 is faster and has HT which the Xeon lacks.
Otherwise for gaming it will be fine.
For photo editing as long as u have good ssd and decent graphics card it should be good. If the bios supports booting off pic-e u could use a lexicom dt120 and boot into m2 sm951 for 2gb/s read speeds.
I would change psu if u use a higher end graphics card.

The i5 also lacks HT which only the i7 has for the Core i branded Desktop series quads.

My bad the i5 he mentions is quad core not dual core with HT.
The 1225 Xeon is without HT but higher versions do have HT with small diff in price.

HT is a waste of money for most applications. Video editing will see the biggest increase in performance, everything else is pretty much the same in the real world.

Hi has anyone here used one of these as a desktop running windows 7/8/10 ? Is this relatively easy to do or are there any quirks with this being a server?

If anyone is looking at upgrading the memory in this thing, it looks like 8GB sticks of unbuffered ECC RAM have plummeted in price:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-CT102472BA160B-DIMM-DDR3-Memory/dp/B006YG8ZNI

Interesting! I didn't know that - have never considered non-ECC in a server. Will that affect reliability? I'm going to be running 3 or 4 VMs processing 24/7.

I wouldn't risk that .. Better for consumer use(home PCs)

anyone know where to get the cheapest 8gb sticks from, ECC or not?

​Its unlikely too my N54L has used non ECC memory since setting it up and it hasn't been powered down for 2 years! Not missed a beat.

The motherboard uses a proprietary power connector so it's not a simple job to just change the PSU:

is there not a converter for a regular PSU ?

Seems you are right there are 2 connectors for board. And both are not std. It would only support graphic cards which don't require standalone power from psu.

How can you see from a photo what the connections are ?

My EVGA 750w PSU is fully modular and has a huge selection of connectors of many different shapes and configurations.

Are you saying that none of those would fit ?

But if you changed the PSU to modular then you could power a GPU without issue - no ?

Set ours up yesterday and very impressed so far. Swapped out the 4GB ECC RAM with 16GB Crucial Non-ECC RAM (this is a development environment so not worth the extra cost). Using Ubuntu Server 14.04.3 LTS x64 for the host with LXD based virtualisation for application containers (also running Ubuntu Server). Build time of our primary application has reduced from just over 3 minutes to just over 1 minute, so great results. Will be installing a second HDD for storing snapshots. Server is very quiet.

You would need an adaptor like this 24 pin atx to 8 pin of the dell motherboard:
http://www.moddiy.com/products/Dell-OptiPlex-3020-PSU-Main-Power-24%252dPin-to-8%252dPin-Adapter-Cable-%2830cm%29.html

The problem is if you change the psu would there be a connector for the motherboard. There is no 24 pin and the 2 connectors on board look like 4pin. Even the sata connectors are powered from the board not psu.

Can someone who has received item confirm the above as we are just relying on the online manual and pics.From them it looks like we have a 4pin power1 and a 8 pin power2 instead of 24pin std connector.

From online dell forums it looks like the adapter works and you will just need to use the std 4pin cpu from your psu for the 2nd connector. Then you can use a more powerful graphics card. The 750ti does not need any adapter.

Many thanks - have found a few links on the matter now too so have ordered one as a replacement PC for my old Mesh PC from 2006 - I don't do anything more taxing than photo editing - so hopefuly should manage this ok.

Hi When installing 750 Ti Graphics card getting this message "please power down and connect the pcie cables for this graphics card" I believe it is missing power cable, anyone knows what power cable is required for this? anyone els also getting this message?

The 750ti needs around 18A from 12v rail. Is the psu providing that? You can buy molex or sata to 6pin connectors if your card needs ext power which is unlikely.
I have read people running 960 gtx after swapping psu .

I viewed this as a cheap replacement for an ageing PC doing multitasking but all the issues over PSU and proprietary build pi55ed me off.

So now we are going the other way and starting with an Intel Core i7-5820K @ 3.30GHz and getting top end performance !

Thanks, from where can i buy Sata to 6PIN connector? Would you be anle to share a link? I dont want to return the card or do other modifications if the issue could be resolved with a cable.

There are many cables with SATA written on in the server . I have ordered SATA to PCI-E 6 PIN cable, finger crossed should work if not then will return the graphics card.

The sata cables are coming from board and are power cables. I hope will work, just waiting for it to be delivered.

Because of the capability of the CPU which, in a non proprietary world would be great, is throttled by Dell's architecture.

Glad I held off now - with the £50 max off eBay code and PayPal credit (4 months interest free) just bagged cpu / case / motherboard / ram and cooler all for £200 squid (already have ssd / hardisk/ psu / Dvd /) well chuffed - nearly hit the button on this server but the gpu limit would do my head in - seems a nice unit anyway but was physically too deep for where it's going to sit

I guess your comment is relevant to anyone considering this as a desktop, but the use of proprietary connections (etc) in a server really shouldn't be any surprise. Any warranty on reliability claimed by Dell is quashed when you start swapping out core components like the PSU, in a server its one of the key ingredients to a reliable system and would have been designed/chosen specifically to meet the expectations of that server line.

In my opinion, for a desktop you'd always be better off with an i7 equivalent tower with more performant non-ECC RAM and the array of standard connections you'd expect from a desktop computer.

@ jazlabs

You picked up on my sentiment entirely. Many folk here are looking at the prospective £170 or so for a desktop replacement and then trying to shoehorn the product to meet their requirements. There are few comments regarding using it purely as a server.

I also run PCs in low intensity operations and thought they could be useful for that and to add backbone to the network but again, the lack of easy options is a pain.

As to matched components then that is a fair point but I should point out that the proprietary nature of Dell does not only persist in servers. The PSU adaptor mentioned above was sought to swap out an Optiplex desktop PSU (of which I have some) and these are bread and butter items where you might expect homogeneous connections. Dell however seems to think otherwise, but it can sell you a highly priced proprietary replacement !

I have to say I'm somewhat out of touch with regards to the PC market these days. I converted to Mac about 10 years ago and have never looked back. Always used to custom build my PCs as I expected these sorts of games from off-the-shelf manufacturers.

This would definitely have made a great desktop replacement, but can see the restrictions regarding the PSU and GFX options being a show stopper. I can confirm that it is working great as a server though :smiley:

I can be used as a desktop replacement but it mainly depends on what use you make of it. For multimedia , browsing you can use the integrated graphics so nothing really extra to spend .
If your use is gaming then you will also need a new psu with adapter. This will use up the only 16x pic-e slot you have and leaves slower pci-e slots for other devices.
You can use a 750ti without need of 6pin cable if you buy one without OC ability. Many using it for gaming would need to buy a gfx card anyway.
If you want to use it for the latest games then the psu with adapter becomes an issue. Will it support large power draws... Read it does online but not tested myself.

For the price.. Your getting decent cpu 4gb ram. Case . Storage/psu and motherboard . It's hard to price up all these to under £175 even if you have to replace a few things.

I am waiting for SATA to PCIE cable, will report back if it works with 750Ti which may help someone in making decision.

I bought this one. You need to change hard disk from RAID mode before installing windows. I installed EVGA Superclocked 2Gb GTX 750 ti, which just slotted in and worked fine, no cables.

It's been working happily since Tuesday, HD gaming on a budget.

whi
which company's 750 Ti you have, mine is gigabyte and it require cable which I am waiting for to be delivered.

Think it's EVGA which is the one of the Ti which doesn't need cable

so. could my n54l qualify for the £150 cashback? if so this would be a great upgrade USB 3.0 and better. CPU.

I can confirm that SATA to 6 PIN cable works with 750 Ti graphics card.

it was for £2.99 from ebay link below

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/131566790537?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Hope this info is helpful.

Damn it! Tried to hold off but looked around and just couldn't find a better deal for a cpu of this spec.
Could have gone for a HP ProLiant ML10 v2 G3240 but http://www.techspot.com/review/972-intel-core-i3-vs-i5-vs-i7/
Got an BX100 and 16GB of Savage 2400mhz from TCB/Bespoke/Amazon madness from a month or two ago floating around as an upgrade.

Crunching WCG CEP2 work units doesn't need hyper-threading as it actually slows crunching down. Will upgrade the GPU as others have in time. Staying in the box until Dell stump up the cashback. Hopefully this will last until Zen launches and we can finally see what it can do!

Cash back extended to 31/01/2016 so can sleep on it. I've replaced my MB in a dell box and just waiting for offer on CPU . If nothing comes up will swap out Xeon and use that.

Anyone know how to check what speed RAM this motherboard can handle ?

Thanks very informative.

Thanks to Radar59 for this

CPU (Socket 1150): Intel Pentium G3220, 2x 3.00GHz, 3MB L3, 53W TDP | Xeon E3-1225 v3 Intel, 4x 3.20GHz max. Turbo 3.60GHz, 8MB L3, 84W TDP
Chipset: Intel C226
Graphics: Intel IGP (depending on the installed CPU) with 1x VGA, 2x DisplayPort
. Memory: unbuffered, 4 DIMM slots DDR3, ECC and non-ECC also mix possible to 1600MHz (1x 4GB ECC | 2x 4GB ECC included) max. 32GB
* and as always Registered ECC memory is incompatible! *
External connectors: 4x USB 3.0 (Front / Rear: 2/2), 6x USB 2.0 (Front / Rear: 2/4), 1x Intel 82579 Gb LAN, 4x jack (Front / Rear: 2/2), 1x serial, 2x PS / 2
Internal connectors: 4x 6Gb / s SATA + 4x SATA power over the mainboard, 1x USB 2.0 header, 1x Speaker header
Bays: 4x 3.5 "HDD with frame (Seagate 1TB ST1000DM003 or Toshiba 1TB included in Xeon), 1x ODD (12.7mm height)
Slots: 1x PCIe x16 Gen2 PCIe x16 Gen3,1x (only x4 tethered), 1x PCIe x1 Gen2, 1x PCI
PSU: HU290EM-01 290Watt PSU 80 PLUS Bronze (+ 12VA 14A, 16A + 12VB, + 12Vsb 1.67A)
Fan: Yateloon Electronics D80SH-12 (80x80x25mm 12V 0.18A 2600RPM 32CFM 34dBA)
Dimensions (LxWxH): 140x150x85mm
Case fans: Sunon PSD1209PLV2-A (92x92x32mm) | Foxconn PV903212PSPF 0C (92x92x32mm)
Dimensions (WxHxD): 175x360x435mm | Mainboard: (width x depth) 244x244mm (uATX compliant)
F2 to get into the BIOS and F12 in the boot manager
Standby (S3): yes | Hibernation (S4): yes | Wake on LAN (WOL): yes
Housing and CPU fans do Proprietary connectors
4x SATA cable and 4x SATA power cables are present in the chassis. For a slim DVD, however, you need, in some cases an extension (Y-cable).
Screws for installation of 2.5 "drives in the Optical Disk Bay or a slim DVD drive can be here found

PowerEdge T20 Technical Guide: click * contains some errors such as HT in 1225v3 * | User Manual: click

Have people has their claims validated....I did this but havent had any email (or deleted it by mistake) and didnt keep a copy of the ID number to track - aahhhhhh
Submitted 23OCT

You have to wait 30 days to submit the claim, and this deal was found not three weeks ago... no, I don't think anybody will have validated claims yet.

Its great with gaming, 750 Ti graphics card working flawlessly when playing COD III.

Superb unit. I've put my 2 x 4TB drives in so a total of 9TB now with Plex. 4 SATA cables are provided in the sever with 4 SATA power cables. Hard drive installation is screw less and takes seconds. Really nice looking unit.

Idle: 24W
Working with 1 Plex transcode: 42W

Pennies to run. :smiley:

Seems a great deal to me. Isn't £175 about the same price as buying the processor alone? Basically getting everything else for free if you remember to do the cashback claim)

Cashback claim took 2 minutes, validated in an hour and payable within 30 days.

Very easy.

great stuff...got the full £150 today for trad in of a Gen7 Proliant - so £95 effective cost - thanks again OP

Has anyone claimed and got the cash back yet? I've just put in my claim but I'm concerned that it is asking for company details as mandatory fields so I'm wondering whether the cash back is only for companies. It was also asking for SN and Order codes which aren't clearly marked on the back. I just filled in some values from the back of the PC which I hope is what they are looking for.....

There was a dell sticker on mine with two numbers on, which I put in those fields, and my cash back went through without a problem.

Anyone got ESXi working properly (seems officially unsupported) or any tips on getting it working?
I installed ESXi 6.0 from here:
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=HJFY8

Installe but seems an IP is not being assigned - "waiting for DHCP" is displayed and cant connect to the IP address displayed to download vSphere etc

Any advice gratefully received