hard to put together a system from scratch even with these **** poor specs at less than 100
heat

note: no HDD, no OS, etc

Depending on what you're using it for, you may just want to spring for a NAS

I have one of these. It is an excellent machine and the construction is top notch. Far better than the microserver which i found very noisy, and difficult to upgrade.

A few things to be aware of.

When turned off it has a slight coil whine. Not to annoying, however I choose to turn it off completely.

It can be used as a cheap steam machine. Install a 750TI and you are good to go. SteamOS works fine.

Case is actually really small. It is smaller than my ITX Phanteks Enthoo so it can slot into most TV cabinets quite nicely.

It is very quiet, but the fan is Dell specific so you won't be replacing it.

Well worth the purchase!

If anyone needs a CPU with a bit more kick, there's also one with a Xeon E3-1225V3 included (£209.98 after £110 cashback on this model)

http://www.ebuyer.com/714837-dell-poweredge-t20-xeon-e3-1225v3-3-2-ghz-4gb-ram-1tb-hdd-tower-t20-3708

For more info around the cashback:https://plus.delltradetosave.com/gb/en/pages/promotions/qualifying

I've been a good boy this month, so bought it:

hard to put together a system from scratch even with these **** poor specs at less than 100
heat

note: no HDD, no OS, etc

Depending on what you're using it for, you may just want to spring for a NAS

>>>>>
Great price for a very easy to use multiplatform bit of kit..



Chuck an ssd in it and serve anything to anywhere from it :wink:

Got one last time, use it as a ESXi host running my plex server and my downloads box. I added another 12Gb of RAM, I used EEC as I had access to some but I think some have had luck with non-ECC too. Double the speed of my old N54L it replaced although uses a bit more power.

serverplus were doing a very similar server (it looks the exact same model, just a different model code) with a 500gb drive for the same price and cashback.

If anyone needs a CPU with a bit more kick, there's also one with a Xeon E3-1225V3 included (£209.98 after £110 cashback on this model)

http://www.ebuyer.com/714837-dell-poweredge-t20-xeon-e3-1225v3-3-2-ghz-4gb-ram-1tb-hdd-tower-t20-3708

For more info around the cashback:https://plus.delltradetosave.com/gb/en/pages/promotions/qualifying

Seems liks good value for the sort of performance, obviously power consumption/running costs will be, inherently, considerably higher (84W TDP).

Could this take away the MicroServers crown? :smiley:

Only if your applications are going to use significant CPU. I have a couple of servers using similar Xeons, and when idle the power draw is not much higher than lower specification Celeron/Pentium fitted machines.Base power draw for this type of server is around the 30W mark (CPU idle, disks spun down) irrespective of CPU. It's when you start stressing the CPU and disks that power usage increases significantly.

I have one of these. It is an excellent machine and the construction is top notch. Far better than the microserver which i found very noisy, and difficult to upgrade.

A few things to be aware of.

When turned off it has a slight coil whine. Not to annoying, however I choose to turn it off completely.

It can be used as a cheap steam machine. Install a 750TI and you are good to go. SteamOS works fine.

Case is actually really small. It is smaller than my ITX Phanteks Enthoo so it can slot into most TV cabinets quite nicely.

It is very quiet, but the fan is Dell specific so you won't be replacing it.

Well worth the purchase!

Personally I'd go for a unit with hardware RAID (this is software) but other than that it's a bargain.

Agreed that's the much better deal, all inclusive system with a great CPU. Only down side is no RAID controller and only space for 4 hard drives. Edited as found out the tiny HPE ProLiants do have a hardware RAID Controller (very bad one but still better than software RAID), so they might be a better bet compared to the OP.

use a client that can play the file natively and you wouldn't need to transcode.

From the picture this machine has audio out. could be used as a cheap desktop for lite use too I guess.

Apparently Plex server always transcodes MKV; personally I use an mp4 container instead.

​i rip most of my films to MKV and plays just fine on the plex app on my TV without transcoding it.

SERVERPLUS

decent for the price but wish i'd just splashed out on the xeon processor. I did get serveplus to price match a ssd and the extra 4gb memory which was good.

Plus 2% Quidco?

still seems to want to transcode the mkvs, tested it on my android box that does dts/dolby passhtrough etc, thought it was actually the box, so tested on my samsung blu ray that can do everything and it was the same.

might try the mp4 container see how that fairs, cheers!

that's why I just use a Kodi client and connect to my NAS with SMB

I run a Lenovo server from a previous HUKD find about a year ago, running Plex.
My main client is my Raspebrry Pi 2 under my TV running 'RasPlex'.
Not a single video has to transcode - it plays it direct, every time. That's MP4, MOV, MKV and even the odd .TS files I have.

So, it's definitely your players at fault..
Though technically MKV is just a 'container' - it could be a variety of codecs inside, which is what your player doesn't support and therefore Plex transcodes it for you.

Is this info (Link) not up to date? Scroll to the bottom.

That's for streaming to a Playstation.. so, probably right for the Playstation, but isn't how Plex works for EVERY player - just that one :wink:

DOH! - Think I'll just slip out the back.

I have one of these. I use it as a 12 TB NAS/Plex server. Had no trouble with it so far and the cash back went through without a hitch.

Are you saying you have a TS140 or similar and used one of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/24pin-to-14pin-Power-Supply-ATX-Cable-for-Lenovo-Q77-B75-A75-Q75-TS140-TS440-/281924803066?hash=item41a40719fa:g:U~EAAOSwv0tVOiEC and the proceeded to use a normal psu and a powerful gpu to make a cheap gaming rig? I've wanted to do this for ages with my ts140. I couldn't find much about it online though, can you elaborate more please :wink: more specifically I wanted to know if you used a ts140 and if so what adapater did you use along side it.

Yes, that's exactly what I've done :wink:
Only flaw is the graphics card blocks the USB header on the motherboard - so I had to disconnect the front USB ports. But I've got a Corsair Strafe RGB mech keyboard, which has an USB port pass-through, so I use that instead.

But yes, essentially I bought a TS140.
Shoved another 16GB of EEC RAM in there (so now totalling 20GB).
Was running Windows 8.1 but upgraded to Windows 10 perfectly when it rolled out last August.
Upgraded the PSU to a Seasonic 600w one, plus that adapter cable you found on eBay.
Bought a GeForce 770 cheap off a mate who upgraded to a 980Ti.
I use the supplied TS140's 500gb HDD as a second 'data' drive, but main OS on a 256gb SDD, and got a cheap 128GB SSD from another HUKD a couple of months ago just for GTA V.
I've also since bought a Drobo, and have 3x 3TB Reds in that, connected to the TS140 via USB3.

It runs Plex, CouchPotato, sabNZBd, Sonarr, PlexPy, Deluge and a DietPi VM running BlackHole DNS blocker all as background tasks. I can have 2 people transcoding in Plex and still play GTA V perfectly...

But yes, that's my 24/7 server / gaming hybrid beast.

It's really quiet, too.

Better than the N54L, but still lacking in the CPU department. That said I have a rather unusual setup in that most of my streaming is outside the network, and as I only get 17 meg upstream I re-encode most content to 1Mb so that I can stream to around 10 clients at once (nowTV boxes). I have a script that scans my data folders on my file server (which is now the old N54L which does all the downloads) and replaces anything not an MP4 with a 1Mb re-encoded MP4.

£152 on flubit, so tempting.
Still get cashback via flubit right?

Is this capable of a 4K output? Not thinking for gaming but as Music Workstation where I want as much screen real estate as I can get

Definitely go for the Xeon if you can afford it...

Along with much more compute power, the Xeon also provides the ability for remote console (Intel AMT) and PCI-e pass-through in ESX (which allowed me to move disks from a physical Xpenology server to a virtual one by connecting the disks to a £22 SATA adapter, rather than a £200 adapter certified for use with ESX :smiley:)

My T20 has 24GB RAM, 250GB SSD Primary data store, 750GB WD Black secondary data store (both mounted in the ODD bay) and 4x 3TB drives in the 3.5" bays. I run 4 Xpenology VMs, plus various Windows and Linux VMs for testing. It hardly ever breaks a sweat.

As someone who has been running their own home/Small business server for the past 5 years RAID has been invaluable. What it means is you have 0 downtime if one of the drives dies, so you can rebuild the array with minimal fuss. Which especially given that you likely don't have backups of the contents of a home server it also acts as a fail safe to stop you loosing data when the inevitable happens and a drive dies.

Never treat RAID as backup, its not all it is to stop the proverbial hitting the fan and giving you warning to deal with an issue.

I've been a good boy this month, so bought it:

Faster

Isn't that equally possible with software RAID, though? I was under the impression that hard RAID just meant compatibility issues in return for a minor controller performance boost.

Could someone please explain how the cashback thingie work? Newbie here.

Looks good - I would get one if I didn't already have a Gen 8 Microserver. 4x3.5" drives in the drive bays and an additional 2x2.5" drives in the optical drive bay - all official, which is a little different to the Microserver where you have to hack them in.

I don't know details, you need to do research for you specifc software capability and hardware, the main difference between hardware and software solution is when is your disk write at the point in time of failure and point of recovery. The data path for hardware failure to spinning disks is shorter than from the OS to disks using a software solution.

Thanks, ordered the Xeon one, amazing deal - worthy of its own post?

A few reasons. Mainly ease of use. Linux is much easier to configure using hardware RAID also it's generally much simpler to rebuild after a drive failure. In addition performance is better as there is no CPU overhead.

Is it easier to configure, than plugging a freenas or similar distro? I don't agree. RAID hardware is yet another point of failure. It's just an added complication for a home user. And for a 4-bay box the performance overhead is minimal.

eBuyer - no thanks. Bunch of crooks.

I don't think anyone here actually 'needs' true hardware RAID. Software RAID is more than enough for home use. Most servers in this price-bracket come with fake-raid adapters, so software-driven on cheap hardware. That's a liability if you ask me. Software is the way forward in that case.

Finally jumped and ordered the Xeon to replace my N40L

This price has been on for a while at Servers+ :
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/dell-poweredge-t20-9186-tower-server-167-94-delivered-serversplus-97-94-after-dell-2401938
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/dell-poweredge-t20-intel-xeon-e3-1225-v3-317-94-207-94-after-110-dell-cashback-serverplus-2406620

Are you sure it's transcoding rather than just repacking the video stream into a different container?

Does anyone know of the hdd limitations on this and how many sata ports it has? Trying to compare to the hp microserver which needs a bit of tweaking to squeeze in 4x4tb hdds and a ssd for o/s

Agreed, if you have hardware raid controller you absolutely must buy a second identical controller, with the same firmware. Otherwise if the primary dies the secondary might, just might, not be able to read the raid set if the on-disk format has changed. I've heard horror stories, fortunately not experienced myself. And you need to test recovery properly.

Linux mdraid is safer as the on-disk format is well defined and portable across motherboards and disk controllers. Or, better yet, use ZFS.

hmmm just been offered a dell 2950 server with 8GB RAM and 2x quad core Xeon CPUs but think might be overkill for a download box and media server

Just depends what your requirements are. I work from home and tend to work on other people's files which I can't afford to loose. Although I use hardware raid I still run an automated backup weekly.

Heat added despite me choosing the Xeon version. Finally bit the bullet, just annoying the postage is so high so standard it is. Will get 16GB memory upgrade later and have a few drives here. May add my hyprid drive and use as the OS drive too.

yeah its a £40 android box, K1 Plus its called, soon as i hooked my samsung smart blu ray up, played a 20gb mkv file the server cpu didnt even break sweat. only had the android box a week or so, think i might send it back and stick with the blu ray. do have an original raspberry pi, might test out rasplex

​Your requirements don't warrant hardware RAID by the sound of it. Software RAID would be more than adequate for simple file storage.

Backups should always be done, regardless of RAID.

Any chance you (or anyone) could confirm the number of SATA ports please (for the Xeon model)? One review I read said it has four SATA2 and two SATA3, while another says only 2 of each.

Thanks very much!

Intel Rapid Storage Controller 12.0 supporting: • SATA 6Gbps (2 ports: SATA0, SATA1) • SATA 3Gbps (2 ports+ SATA2, SATA3) • 4 SATA connectors support optional additional hard drives and optical drives.

I have the SSD attached to SATA0 and the WD Black connected to SATA2.

Full Technical Guide here: http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/shared-content~data-sheets~en/documents~poweredge_t20_technical_guide.pdf

I'm running one of these in mine...

http://www.dx.com/p/iocrest-marvell-88se9215-chipset-sata-iii-6gbps-4-port-pci-express-controller-card-green-282997

The Marvell chipset is supported by Xpenology which allows me to pass the adapter through to a VM and let Xpenology handle the adapter and all the attached disks.

I learned that the hard way after suffering an Unrecoverable Read Error during a RAID rebuild on a home server :disappointed:

Brill! Thanks cjed and Berhwale.

I'll take a look at the DX link and get ready to pack out the case with my old disks which are currently making the place look untidy.

Cheers!

This is why I don't bother with raid for most of my storage. Just frequent backups.
Storage space used for mirroring is much better spent on backup. And if you're going into raid 5 you're just asking for trouble.
Also learnt the hard way BTW.

Yeah, seems the term I was looking for is probably transmuxing.

Besides speed, the other advantage of a hardware raid is that it is independent of the operating system, so it doesn't matter what operating system is run of top of it.
Whereas if you dual boot a windows and a linux system, one or the other may not see the software raid at best or may totally screw it up attempting to use it (at worst).
With proper hardware raid, it is usual to have battery backup, in the event that the pc stops working, then the raid controller doesn't and has time to write error correcting information to the disks before they shut down. Of course this cannot happen with a software raid.

Plex will transcode or re-mux based on the contents of the container and the capabilities of the client (e.g. resolution, container support, audio and video codec support)

If the client has the capability to decode the container, the video and audio streams, then Plex will direct play.

If the client can handle the video and audio, but not the container, then Plex with DirectStream the video and audio.

If the client can't handle the audio (e.g. DTS-HD), but can handle the video, then Plex will transcode the audio (e.g. to AC3) and re-mux it with the video stream.

If the client can't handle any of the above, then it will transcode and stream both the video and audio.

You can see from the above that it's quite important to match Plex client settings to actual capabilities of your client.

FYI, my Xeon T20 will transcode a high bitrate 1080p movie to 720p @ 3Mbps (for use on my phone) at around 12x real-time (5 minutes for every hour of video). I have Plex running in a VM with 4 vCPUs and 4GB of RAM.

I've just ordered one of these T20 servers to replace my N54L which has 5 SATA drive installed, without any need for expansion. I've just rung Servers Plus, who confirmed that the T20 supports 6 SATA drives.

I even cited this thread. He went away to double check and came back with 6.

The 1.50gbp a month for elite is worth it.

Even if I only buy 2 things a year from it.

My flubit was dispatched today, nice and quick..
Shame im away for 5 days oops.

Was offered it for free (well a couple of pints)

As it happens I have a T20 - it only has 4 SATA ports on the motherboard. You can confirm this by Dell's specification for the T20 - link here.

Grab it!

ZFS doesn't like hardware RAID, so not always better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

Ehh? Why would you software error checking file system on top of a hardware raid????
Doesn't make sense to me.

Yup. Going anywhere near virtualisation and I would say the passthru of the Xeon is so worth the extra. Trying to stop myself from buying a second .......

​how much does it cost in elctricity for you running 24/7?

I have Dell Vostro 620 which has an i5 Sandybridge installed but can only accomodate 8G RAM max.

I do a lot of video editing, so if I loaded this with 32Gb would it perform better - would install SSD as I have in my Vostro?

How much would 32G RAM cost?

Oh talking about the dearer Xeon T20 one here!

I paid £80 on ebay for a 32GB Crucial DDR3 PC12800 1600MHz CL11 8GB CT102464BD160B kit

It takes non-ECC memory and has worked fine for the last 4 months.

Can anyone find a decent supplier of the Sata Extension kit for this? The thing needed to support power for more then 4HDD's. Dell say it's the "400-acrr" but I can only find like 1place who sell it :-/.

would this work as a basic pc for plex/ kodi with an ssd on it?

For some reason this didn't even come to mind. I was only thinking about the Dell one. Obviously this will also work fine, thankyou.

The Startech board is actually recommended in the Dell technical guide - page 15:
http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/04/shared-content~data-sheets~en/documents~poweredge_t20_technical_guide.pdf

I have one of these...

http://www.dx.com/p/iocrest-marvell-88se9215-chipset-sata-iii-6gbps-4-port-pci-express-controller-card-green-282997

Twice the ports for less money and the Marvell chipset is supported by Xpenology, so it can be passed through in vSphere 6.0

edit: Use this link to pay £22.99 and have it shipped in 5-7 days from the EU rather than China...

http://eud.dx.com/product/iocrest-marvell-88se9215-chipset-sata-iii-6gbps-4-port-pci-express-controller-card-green-844282997

So these cards work OK with vt-D on esx? - this could work for consolodating my old n36 microserver freenas installation into vsphere6 on my Xeon TS140.

Shows as £239.99 or £169.99 after £70 cashback now.

yeah.. thanks.. I don't see how to expire it in the android app so I have reported it :smile:

I think any card with a chipset that's supported by FreeNAS should work fine. I'm running Xpenology (based on Synology DSM) which supports the Marvell chipset on the card I linked to. Using DirectPath I/O on this card allowed me to transplant multi-drive arrays from a bare metal server, directly to a VM running on my Dell T20.

Interested in the ESXi stuff - but where to start. Any pointers?

I downloaded the free version of esxi, and installed it to a USB stick. I then booted off that leaving my main drive for images. It probably would have run much better from the SSD but I was testing originally then just left it! I used the vSphere client to configure it all.

Cool thanks
I'll give that a go

There is a dell specific version of esxi 6.0 update 2.
Works great for me on dell T20 w/ Xeon

Here's the link http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=RXCGV

I'm pleased to report I just got my cashback confirmed.
I used Flubit via Ebuyer and they don't include any of the product numbers on the invoice so Dell had issues accepting it at first.

However after sending then a picture of the service tag they approved it within 12hours.

"Your Claim value is 70.00 and this amount will be paid to your bank account within 30 working days."

So £152 - 70 = £82, nice.

Result :man:

I assume you waited the 30 days?
The claim form can be found on this promotional website and must be completed no sooner than 30 days and no later than 60 days from the date of purchase.

Yes, as i said. All done, claim accepted,payment processing as of that post.