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Home Hardware, Best Bang per Dollar.

Hello again Astaro Community!

It's been awhile since I was active on the forums but I'm back with more questions for the experts. I'm trying to make the most powerful build with the least amount of space and cost requirements. The quieter the better. I don't build rigs for a living but I believe these are complete and functional, if you see any incompatibilities or gaping holes please point them out!

I have 3 "rigs" below, 2 I have thought about building and a pre-built bare-bones listed below and would appreciate any opinions you have to offer.

1. Preferred

Motherboard: GA-B75N $79.95
BIOS version: 2 x 64 Mbit flash, Use of licensed AMI EFI BIOS, Support for DualBIOS™, PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0, SM BIOS 2.6, ACPI 2.0a
CPU: Intel Celeron G540 2.5GHz Dual Core Sandy Bridge 65W 1155 Socket $49.95
RAM: Kingston Hyper X G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) $44.95
Network Interfaces: 2 x Realtek GbE LAN chips (10/100/1000 Mbit)
Hard Disk: SATA 2.5' 120GB $39
Case/Chassis: M350 by Mini-Box.com $39
Power Supply: picoPSU-150-XT + 102W Adapter Power Kit from Mini-box.com $59
Total Power Consumption Unpurchased/Unknown. Processor is 65W Rated
Total Cost: Estimated $320 ($311.85) USD before shipping/tax or any changes. Most if not all parts are currently offering free shipping.

Comments / Notes: This system can easily be beefed up for not much more cash if you want the newer Ivy-bridge processors or a core i3,i5,i7. Also its small and supposed to be really quiet if not soundless and according to the specs can be ran fanless which would cut down on both noise, power and moving parts. Also I don't believe this motherboard shipps with a SATA cable for the HDD which would need to be purchased as well as some other possible misc cords and screws.

I'm sure I could go cheaper on the RAM. Any thoughts?

2. OEM Production 2550L2D-MxPC Black Mini / Booksize Barebone System - Newegg.com (I used Google URL Shortner to post this link to Newegg, if you would prefer to just search it yourself here is the model#)

2550L2D-MxPC

I have read several reviews on the Atom based processor's and everything I have read make me feel like the celeron's are superior. If thats NOT the case, or if it doesn't matter in THIS case then this system costs approx. $217.95 USD before any other costs like shipping or tax are considered (all offer free shipping currently) and would be the best buy I think.

Kingston Hyper X 2x 2GB sticks KHX16S9K2 ($24.95 for BOTH)

3. Cheapest I think that could possibly work.
Motherboard: GA-C1007UN-D $89
BIOS version: 2 x 32 Mbit flash, Use of licensed AMI EFI BIOS, Support for DualBIOS™, PnP 1.0a, DMI 2.0, SM BIOS 2.6, ACPI 2.0a
CPU: Intel Celeron 1007U 1.5Ghz Dual Core
RAM: Kingston Hyper X G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) $44.95
Network Interfaces: 2 x Realtek GbE LAN chips (10/100/1000 Mbit)
Hard Disk: SATA 2.5' 120GB $39
Case/Chassis: M350 by Mini-Box.com $39
Power Supply: picoPSU-150-XT + 102W Adapter Power Kit from Mini-box.com $59
Total Power Consumption (in Watts, if known): Unpurchased/Unknown. Processor is 65W Rated
Total Cost: Estimated $270.95 most parts are free shipping.
Comments / Notes: Taking a 1GHz processing hit to save 50 bucks seems a bit steep.

Also because its relevant, this is just for basic home use, multiple devices connecting via wireless to a router behind Sophos with much video streaming and gaming. Current connection is max at 6Mbps (small town) but most likely will never see more than 50Mbps of throughput. I would like/need to utilize most of Sophos features. IPS, Antivirus (maybe), web filtering, application control, firewall rules, possible QoS, ect.

I look forward to your thoughts and opinions!

Best Regards,

Bergie

Edit Notes.

I did this all very late one night and made some mistakes.

Edit 1 - Celeron 1007U is a Dual Core not a Single Core.
Edit 2 - Motherboard for Rig's 1 & 3 requires Desktop Memory not Laptop Memory.
Edit 3 - Rig 2 did not have Ram quoted in the estimated cost.

This thread was automatically locked due to age.

Parents

0 BarryG over 11 years ago

re HP Gen8 MicroServer...

Most users can ignore this post unless you need:
a. a faster CPU
b. RAID
c. virtualization

RAID: the UTM only supports (some) HARDWARE RAID controllers; many modern RAID controllers are 'soft' RAID and need a driver to do much of the work in the CPU (unsupported by UTM); hardware raid controllers have their own processor.

CPUs: there are some blogs & forums online which show that many of the Xeon 1155 'Ivy Bridge' CPUs will work in the g8 microserver;
ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Links - HP Microserver - HomeServerShow Forums
(Ignore the first 8 lines as they are for comparison with other servers.)

here's a site with a screenshot from another site (the b3n.org site has been down for about a week):
Compatible Processors for the HP MicroServer Gen8 : MS Windows Home Server
http://www.mswhs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Compatable-Processors-for-the-HP-Gen8.jpg
http://b3n.org/installed-xeon-e3-1230v2-in-gen8-hp-microserver/ (site down, but if you put this URL into Google, you can read a cached copy. If you read the comments, you'll see several reports of misc working CPUs).

None of the i3/i5/i7 CPUs EXCEPT the 'T' series (i3, i5) have ECC support; also, they do not support VT-D (for VM PCI pass-through).
The T-series i5-3470t is so expensive that you might as well just get a Xeon.

I've seen no reports of non-ECC CPUs working.

TDP (watts) is a bigger issue. The CPUs HP uses are 35W TDP... the 45W E3-1265L v2 seems like a good fit, but hotter CPUs will probably require adding a fan to the CPU heatsink (the stock heatsink has no fan, relying on airflow from the chassis fan).

List of Intel Xeon microprocessors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Xeon E3-1220L v2 (17W, dual-core + HT) or the E3-1265L v2 (45W, quad-core + HT, ~$320USD) seem like the most reasonable choices to me. Both are quite expensive though, so the 1265Lv2 seems the better buy.

CARDS: there's one HALF-HEIGHT PCIe 16x slot. It is not very long.

Many sites recommend the IBM m1015 card (made by LSI) as:
a. it has the same SAS/SATA connector as the HP backplane's cable
b. it is cheap (~$120USD on Amazon & eBay without RAID5)
c. it can be flashed to non-RAID "IT mode" for FreeNAS ZFS
d. it works with VT-D / PCI passthrough (with a VT-D CPU) in ESXi, for FreeNAS etc.
e. it can do RAID 5 if you purchase an upgrade key

more info:
HP Microserver - HomeServerShow Forums
Note that this, and many other sites, have lots of info on the older model microservers; focus on the Gen8 stuff.

BTW, the older models are very cheap now, but they have slow CPUs, 8GB max RAM, and only 1 NIC.

The Gen8 is limited to 16GB max RAM, so it may not be an ideal ESXi server for some users.
It is theoretically possible that 16gb unregistered DIMMs will appear on the market, and maybe they will be supported by HP (for 32GB total RAM, theoretically, at great expense).
Registered DIMMs WILL NOT WORK.

Power: with the stock Celeron CPU, idle power consumption is 30W with no drives, 31W with 1 drive, and about 60W @ idle with 4 WD 7200RPM drives. I don't know why adding 3 drives makes such a big difference.
130w peak at POST.

Barry
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0 BarryG over 11 years ago

re HP Gen8 MicroServer...

Most users can ignore this post unless you need:
a. a faster CPU
b. RAID
c. virtualization

RAID: the UTM only supports (some) HARDWARE RAID controllers; many modern RAID controllers are 'soft' RAID and need a driver to do much of the work in the CPU (unsupported by UTM); hardware raid controllers have their own processor.

CPUs: there are some blogs & forums online which show that many of the Xeon 1155 'Ivy Bridge' CPUs will work in the g8 microserver;
ProLiant MicroServer Gen8 Links - HP Microserver - HomeServerShow Forums
(Ignore the first 8 lines as they are for comparison with other servers.)

here's a site with a screenshot from another site (the b3n.org site has been down for about a week):
Compatible Processors for the HP MicroServer Gen8 : MS Windows Home Server
http://www.mswhs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Compatable-Processors-for-the-HP-Gen8.jpg
http://b3n.org/installed-xeon-e3-1230v2-in-gen8-hp-microserver/ (site down, but if you put this URL into Google, you can read a cached copy. If you read the comments, you'll see several reports of misc working CPUs).

None of the i3/i5/i7 CPUs EXCEPT the 'T' series (i3, i5) have ECC support; also, they do not support VT-D (for VM PCI pass-through).
The T-series i5-3470t is so expensive that you might as well just get a Xeon.

I've seen no reports of non-ECC CPUs working.

TDP (watts) is a bigger issue. The CPUs HP uses are 35W TDP... the 45W E3-1265L v2 seems like a good fit, but hotter CPUs will probably require adding a fan to the CPU heatsink (the stock heatsink has no fan, relying on airflow from the chassis fan).

List of Intel Xeon microprocessors - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Xeon E3-1220L v2 (17W, dual-core + HT) or the E3-1265L v2 (45W, quad-core + HT, ~$320USD) seem like the most reasonable choices to me. Both are quite expensive though, so the 1265Lv2 seems the better buy.

CARDS: there's one HALF-HEIGHT PCIe 16x slot. It is not very long.

Many sites recommend the IBM m1015 card (made by LSI) as:
a. it has the same SAS/SATA connector as the HP backplane's cable
b. it is cheap (~$120USD on Amazon & eBay without RAID5)
c. it can be flashed to non-RAID "IT mode" for FreeNAS ZFS
d. it works with VT-D / PCI passthrough (with a VT-D CPU) in ESXi, for FreeNAS etc.
e. it can do RAID 5 if you purchase an upgrade key

more info:
HP Microserver - HomeServerShow Forums
Note that this, and many other sites, have lots of info on the older model microservers; focus on the Gen8 stuff.

BTW, the older models are very cheap now, but they have slow CPUs, 8GB max RAM, and only 1 NIC.

The Gen8 is limited to 16GB max RAM, so it may not be an ideal ESXi server for some users.
It is theoretically possible that 16gb unregistered DIMMs will appear on the market, and maybe they will be supported by HP (for 32GB total RAM, theoretically, at great expense).
Registered DIMMs WILL NOT WORK.

Power: with the stock Celeron CPU, idle power consumption is 30W with no drives, 31W with 1 drive, and about 60W @ idle with 4 WD 7200RPM drives. I don't know why adding 3 drives makes such a big difference.
130w peak at POST.

Barry
Cancel
Vote Up 0 Vote Down

Cancel

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