Hello, I’m looking for a good first server for a homelab.
I do already have an old Dell poweredge 1950 I got for £30 but it’s:

  • Loud
  • Draws 350W
  • Costs too much to run
  • Only has 2 HDD slots
  • DRAC card needs Internet explorer

I’m not too bothered by the noise because I can just move it, but the electricity cost is quite ridiculous for something less powerful than my PC in every way.
I live in the UK so electricity prices are a huge factor for this.

My Ideal specs are:

  • ~16 cores (total)
  • >= 128GB RAM
  • ~100W idle power draw
  • >= 4 3.5" HDD bays
  • Preferably HBA mode on RAID card
  • £100-200
  • 2U

Is this completely unreasonable? I have found servers that match this all except the 3.5" bays and 2U.
Initially I found a Dell server with 128GB of RAM and two 12 core CPUs for about £200 but I realised it only has 2.5" bays.
There is a nice R720 on ebay I am watching but it will probably skyrocket near the end of the bid. Also, it probably draws a lot of power.
Any suggestions? do I just need to raise my price?
Thanks

  • -RYknow
    1•1 year ago

    Is 3.5" drive bays a deal breaker? Cause if not, I absolutely LOVE my Hyve Zeus servers!

    • ThomasOP
      1•1 year ago

      Do you mean 2.5"? It probably is a deal breaker sadly, unless I can build a DIY SAN or something (I would love to). It sounds bad but I’m probably going to super cheap out on HDDs and buy those crappy £9 SAS drives from ebay and just use aggressive RAID and backups

      Also, I can’t find a single one of those that isn’t shipped from the USA

      • -RYknow
        1•1 year ago

        No. I meant 3.5" your original post listed >= 4 3.5" bays.

        In my hyve Zeus servers I run two ssd’s in a mirror, and then host all my data on a trunas server with an nfs share. That said, ssd’s are really reasonable (just bought 2 x 2packs of 1tb ssd’s for $66 each). If space requirements exceed what you can do with some ssd’s, then I get it.

        I have an r510 as a trunas server. It uses well over a 100 watts, so I can at least provide you that info. Haha.

        • @[email protected]
          1•1 year ago

          Nuked my lemmy by accident so using a different account.

          No. I meant 3.5" your original post listed >= 4 3.5" bays.

          Sorry I figured that out after posting but couldn’t edit.

          I was hoping to get about 18TB in RAID but really I should probably just built a dedicated NAS with some new drives not crappy used ones anyway. I found a listing for 3TB SAS HDDs for £9 each, probably really bad drives though.

          I have an r510 as a trunas server. It uses well over a 100 watts, so I can at least provide you that info. Haha.

          I’ll have to think about that. It’s cost more to run the server for a few months that to buy the thing if it uses too much power.