Do you hate him that much?

I have this server running FreeNAS 10 (aka FreeNAS Corral). After upgrading and adding hard disks, etc etc the cost went up to £739. Worth every penny in my opinion.

Server: £115
16gb Memory: £87
16gb MicroSD Card to reboot FreeNAS: £6
128gb USB Stick for cache, transmission, Plex cache, etc etc: £22
512gb SSD drive to host VMs: £89
4 x 5tb HDD: £420

Total cost: £739

I have mine in the loft running 24x7 and connected to the router downstairs via two ethernet cables running through the chimney.

I use it for everything, Transmission (torrent downloading), Plex, running VMs,...etc.

As some people said, it's not the fastest but you can upgrade the processor if you want mega speed. If you want to go crazy trascode multiple full HD streams,...etc, it will struggle. But if you want to use for home-use, which is what it's intended for, it's perfect.

Mine runs transmission, a couple of VMs while streaming a couple of full HD movies to different TVs comfortably. Most clients don't need transcoding nowadays unless you're watching in a browser from outside home.

It's also worth mentioning that it has an iLO interface, which really helps running it as a headless machine.

Highly recommended in my opinion, and at this price it's a steal.

These are dog slow nowadays, you can get the gen9 mini tower for £30 more, seems a no brainer to me being a former owner of this model for about 6 months before I gave up on it and sold it to my brother.

Gen9, later chipset, DDR4, more room to expand and a 300w PSU.

But if I ONLY want for plex and file server, is this okay?

Thanks

I say no once it starts having to transcode it will sit at very high CPU as it just can't cope, one of the reasons I got rid. Even with a E3-1220 v2 it could only just cope.

For £30 more you have a better chip and bandwidth plus more upgradable in the future instead of legacy parts with huge markups.

This works great if you want to backup your photos, videos, run as plex server, file server etc.. You can even get it to transcode your videos from a folder. Personally I want my files to be converted to mp4 and I do that using VLC cli, which automatically picks up files from folders and does it for me. ( https://wiki.videolan.org/Transcode/ )
I also run a batch process to pick up all pics from a folder and arrange them by date folders. Moreover its small, silent & power efficient :smiley:

I have a N54L and I've never had any problems with it being slow transcoding? Surely this should be even faster than the N54L so why would it not be able to keep up?

huh?
http://www.serversplus.com/servers/tower_servers/hp_tower_servers/837826-421

Looking at replacing my 54l with a g4560 micro atx build.

Any reason why some wd red 5400 sata drives wouldnt work in this? I can see an hp option but they are ao expensive

Last question, I PROMISE! Will i need to buy a sata cable or do they come built in

Can't you replace the cpu in these with a cheapie i3 as its not soldered in anymore?

These are cheaper on ebuyer. See here: http://www.ebuyer.com/722189-hpe-proliant-gen8-4gb-ram-microserver-ebuyer-com-819185-421£104.14 after cashback (free postage).

Silent is the opposite that I've read about these in reviews. I don't have one of these and been put off by the reports of how noisy they are. Any comments from owners?

Showing as £124-98 after cashback for me - are you forgetting VAT?

With supported drives (such as WD reds) that have a temp sensor and the stock chip it will idle at 6% fan, it is quiet then, not silent but quiet. The problems happen with people trying to reuse old drives with no temp support and this causes it to default to 50% fan, aka hairdryer. It is just about impossible to fit a quieter fan unless you can live with said fan at 100% speed.

Even at 6% it was louder than my water cooled games rig so it had to move into the cupboard under the stairs.

My mistake, clicked on the Business site to look at servers. Should be more careful.

The PSU has just gone pop on my N40L, would it be to naive to hope i could just swap the GPU and HDs into one of these and be back in business?

I don't have raid setup, just standalone drives on Windows 10. I don't fancy having to set everything up from scratch again, not sure i could remember how i did all the automated bits after five years...to the week ironically!

I have them like that, you can read the data on any pc so you should be fine.

Thanks

I have a Gen8 with all of my music and videos on it. Can anyone recommend a decent Linux media server for it that ISN'T Plex? (I tried Plex before and it would never fully scan my music collection, which is > 90,000 tracks

Kubuntu uses KDE and it's not a lightweight desktop manager, for media streaming I'd not use KDE. Xubuntu or Lubuntu would be a better choice for media streaming. You could also use Enlightment as a desktop manger >

https://www.enlightenment.org/

Cheers for this, just ordered an 2390t off the back of this. Miles cheaper than elsewhere and seems to be a fair bit faster!

I have this server running FreeNAS 10 (aka FreeNAS Corral). After upgrading and adding hard disks, etc etc the cost went up to £739. Worth every penny in my opinion.

Server: £115
16gb Memory: £87
16gb MicroSD Card to reboot FreeNAS: £6
128gb USB Stick for cache, transmission, Plex cache, etc etc: £22
512gb SSD drive to host VMs: £89
4 x 5tb HDD: £420

Total cost: £739

I have mine in the loft running 24x7 and connected to the router downstairs via two ethernet cables running through the chimney.

I use it for everything, Transmission (torrent downloading), Plex, running VMs,...etc.

As some people said, it's not the fastest but you can upgrade the processor if you want mega speed. If you want to go crazy trascode multiple full HD streams,...etc, it will struggle. But if you want to use for home-use, which is what it's intended for, it's perfect.

Mine runs transmission, a couple of VMs while streaming a couple of full HD movies to different TVs comfortably. Most clients don't need transcoding nowadays unless you're watching in a browser from outside home.

It's also worth mentioning that it has an iLO interface, which really helps running it as a headless machine.

Highly recommended in my opinion, and at this price it's a steal.

It should never be bought as a gaming PC as you need a decent chip as well, as for the PSU, I have no idea, it may need an adapter cable. Best to go ask on a forum that deals with it like homeservershow.

No worries I wanted the i5 3570t because it's quad core but you can't get them anywhere the 2390t is an inbetween going full Xeon as Xeon chips are ridiculous money.

That's correct but these are more than capable a running KDE. I usually recommend Kubuntu as a first hop from Windows.

I have the N54L and it certainly wasn't silent when I got it. I had to replace the case fan and the power supply fan (which involved some dismantling and soldering). Now it's quiet, but it was way too loud for me initially.

Off topic, but does anyone know if in the HP mini tower referenced elsewhere in the thread you could replace the Pentium G4400 with the G4560?

You're probably right - the G4400 looks good for general use but a mismatch for even the 7870, which is now well out of date itself. Best eBay the GPU and stick to streaming from the actual gaming machine.

So... the HP mini tower or buying this and an old CPU from CEX?

The Gen8 platforms just not that good at transcoding modern films.

Trouble with the Hp tower is the ddr4 ram it is mega expensive at the moment. if you shop around for ddr3 ecc ram it is cheap I picked up 2x 8gb a year ago for £20 and can see similar prices even on eBay for the ram now. the gen 8 can be very powerful depends how much you want to spend on it I nearly picked up a low profile 750ti for £50 The other day that works in it and you can put a 1050ti I think that's the newer similar model to the 750ti in it obviously the fan will go mad if gaming. you can also put very powerful Xeon cpus in it if you have the money or find a server with the chip cheap and add a fan to the cpu. they are great for space saving compared to the larger computers and have ilo and two nics which is great also vmware finally updated their watchlist app after two years of not working so it's even better. Only major issue is 16gb max ram if you need more you need a tower that can take 32gb plus.

It's arrived today the chip, will drop the upgrade in tonight. In terms of the celeron I don't think its awful, not fast, but not awful I had a full cisco call manager running in VMware and 2016 server running my CCTV. Its currently just running CCTV server with 2 cameras recording to disk.

Cheers for the headsup on the chip. Should give me a boost by the looks of it.

I went with the i3 3240 first and it was a massive jump in speed for me the i5 is pretty much the same should be a nice boost also passthrough could come in handy and tdp 35w maximum for the heatsink I still can't bring myself to sell this gen 8 even though I don't really need it it's just so small and useful when needed plus I have 16gb ram, ssd and 4 drives so it's already maxed out if they make a new one I will get that hopefully they will

No I don't like raid if something fails I can pull out the disks and put in another computer. I also had the original was nice to see the difference in performance I picked up a n36l with 8gb ram and 1tb drive for £10 last month amazing deal but couldn't find a use for it so sold on loads cheap out there but they are a bit weak now unless used for xpenology

That's what I did with mine put it at my sister's as a off site backup and she used it to watch Kodi films on I don't like uploading pics anywhere they own them and could use them if wanted

Also when ppl add all kinda nonsense like gfx cards and start saying it's slow cos it doesn't run the latest games well and sounds like a hoover...

What is this Gen9 people keep speaking of? I wasn't aware they released a Gen9 MicroServer...

It's a g4400 ddr4 tower like the dell t20 and Lenovo ts140 but people don't rate it well it only has display adaptor ports and to use sound on them you need a certain display port adaptor also ddr4 ram is very expensive at the moment. it's cheap but not many people like it

Far cry at 2 fps :smiley:

I've had a N54L sitting around for a few years. Just in the process of switching the CCTV from analogue to IP Cams at both my parents house and my new house, so thought i'd found a use for it.

Plan is to upgrade the N54L to 8GB (avoiding 16GB as I want rock solid stability), install xpenology and chuck some WD Reds in there. It will just be serving as a NAS for couple of laptops, storage for 4 4MP cams and OpenVPN.

I then need another one for second house and was planning to grab this.

Presume the threads recommending the mini tower wouldn't apply to me? Surely the N54l and Gen 8 will be fine for this application. I don't need transcoding. Just general NAS use OpenVPN server via Xpenology.

I already have the N54L so might aswell give that a shot. But before I buy this has anyone got any alternative recommendations I should consider for my requirements?

Its going in the eaves and running 24/7. So small, quiet, efficient and not a radiator is preferable over power I won't use.

I've just picked up a 4GB ECC DIMM for my N54l (as per my previous post) and was planning to grab a Gen8 and put the 4GB DIMM from that in the N54L to bring it upto 8GB (I know people say it can take 16GB, but only running xpenology plus openvpn plugin, so stability is more important IMO).

I'll need some new DIMMS for the Gen8 so would really appreciate a pointer to the eBay Dimms you are referring to. I've been looking around and DDR3 prices seem to have gone crazy over the last year :/

Maximum storage capacity: 16 TB

That seems pretty low nowadays. Anyone managed to increase this? 10TB single drives now less than half price.

Ordered before the cashback expires.

Anyone found and cheap memory? Looking to get an 8GB DIMM initially then bump to 16GB with another 8GB DIMM if needed (Xpenelogy plus Open VPN server plugin).

Finally got mine how I want it. i5 2390t, hd 6450, 16gb ram, Esxi 6.5 November with passthrough to my bedroom Tv to watch films Its a backup server for my main server didn't want it just sitting there backing up every now and then so using it to watch films and remove a computer from the bedroom although it is in the loft because it's too noisy to put anywhere else. I just picked up some 2tb sky boxes with Wi-Fi and got the 2tb western digital green drives out of them they are all fine been on for ages so prove the test of time and dirt cheap around £15 a drive if you keep checking around little bit slow 5400rpm but great for vm's and backing up. These servers are still great will get a quad core cpu at some point I expect as the gen8 is so reliable and ilo and watchdog on my phone is amazing

The Bays are not Hot swap, they are cold swap (power off to swap drive in bay).

They are a technically a hot swap bay with a controller that doesn't support it, cheap upgrade though and you have hot swap, this was more to answer the question at hand, does he need a sata cable :smiley:

:smiley: Great servers though, I have 4 !!!