Right now I use an old Dell compaq (i3 3220, 12GB RAM, small SSD + 2TB HDD)
I use it for Owncloud, game hosting and automatic media management.
I want to upgrade to something more solid and with parity so I can actually use it for more than movies that I would be sad when lost but nothing world-ending. Plan is to use TrueNAS and throw maybe 4x 8TB drives in there with raidz1 with thy ability to add more later. And move all my docker stacks there.
I found a local seller of old refurbished servers and the prices and capabilities look very good but I want to go through reddit homelab experts first.
some of the good looking listings listings: (Prices converted from CZK to EUR)
- Dell PowerEdge R610 12-Core 2.26 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core L5640 | 8 GB | 6x SFF | 6/I | iDRAC6 | 4x 1Gb Ethernet ) - 74€
- IBM System x3630 M3 12-Core 2.26 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core L5640 | 16+ GB | 14 disků 3.5" | ServeRAID M5015 | IMM port | 2x 1Gb Ethernet ) - 102€
- Dell PowerEdge R620 12-Core 2.00 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core E5-2630L | 16+ GB RAM | 8/10 disků 2.5" | 1Gb/10Gb | Ethernet/SFP+ ) - 139€
- Dell PowerEdge R510 12-Core 2.27 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core Intel L5640 | 16 GB | 12x LFF | H700 | iDRAC6 | 2x 1Gb Ethernet ) - 167€
- Dell PowerEdge R620 v2 12-Core 2.40 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core E5-2630Lv2 | 16+ GB RAM | 8/10 disků 2.5" | 1Gb/10Gb | Ethernet/SFP+ ) - 198€
and many, many more (you can check the link above).
Big plus is most of them have 2 year warranty.
Questions:
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Are they worth it? Can I find something better elsewhere?
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power consumption is bad right? :D. Could I turn one CPU off or take one out entirely?
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noise - can the fans be adjusted so it’s actually usable somewhere where people live. Or can I upgrade the fans to something more manageable?
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Bottom tier spec, noisy, power hungy. Most seem to take 2.5" disks and one takes 3.5" disks, you need to find disk rails and disk controller may not be happy with consumer sata disk unless you were planning to buy brand SAS disks.
Fans in those are quite small and need to push lots of air trough, I don’t see how to make them quiet easily, fan headers are propietary and sizes most likely are not standard.
If you need to cheap out, then maybe some aliexpress mobo with used xeon + ddr3, hba card and standard atx tower etc.
In short: no. In longer: hell no.
Jokes aside, everything that comes with a Xeon L is ancient and will draw a lot of power for not very much performance. In fact, I think your i3 might be more powerful than those R610.
Those R620 may still be ok, but they are also getting really old now. They will be very noisy - if you haven’t run a server like those at home, you’ll be surprised how loud those are. Imagine a vacuum running constantly in your room. That noisy. You can’t do much about that, they simply need a ton of airflow, so more quiet fans would most likely lead to overheating.
For your use case I would simply go with a used desktop (not the tiny ones, a regular sized one), add a HBA for more drives and call it a day. Those are cheap, roughly 70-80€ for a used 7th gen i5. The bigger ones might even be cheaper because most people want the sff or tiny versions. A used LSI HBA with IT mode may be another 30-40€ or so. That system will sip power and most likely won’t be audible. If it is, swap in silent fans and done.
If you do want a rack mount, ipmi, and so on, I’d go the diy route with a Xeon e3 v5/6. Gen system. Those are plenty powerful and don’t draw too much power. Downside is they mostly exclusively use ECC UDIMM which is rather rare and expensive in the used market.
If they have DDR3 RAM, I personally wouldn’t use them Strictly for performance understandings. This being they would struggle to keep up with any more modern chip you can get that does support DDR4/DDR5 for a decent price.
That being said, if you need a server to run some basic tasks. You could do worse, but I wouldn’t say I suggest it.
If I were using that site personally and looking I would look more towards the HP DL380 G9 for about $500. But anything from that site is going to SUCK when it comes to sound. Not something you want in a room where you want it to be quiet. Mine is in my office and makes a decent but not unbearable sound.