Is this good for a home server?

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LucasG

Gawd
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Been looking at eBay and trying to find a cheap server I can setup Windows Server/Linux dual boot option. Is something like this enough to just add an SSD/HDD and get it running?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/154594878339

Will probably host things such as media server, game server such as valheim, project zomboid and then just play around with it. Don't want too spend too much but don't want to get garbage.
 
The 2620v2 is kind of ancient at this point. The 26XXv3 was a major upgrade and v4 was significant too, a supermicro x9 board is stuck on v2 (or maybe v1). Are you going to do local pickup or are you going to have to pay $65 to ship this?

This one is more fiddly, but might have a lot more performance. Fiddly things to watch out for: a) this one comes with a single cpu, b) only two drive caddies and probably harder to source, I'd contact them to see if you can get full caddies, c) biggest one, the NIC is sfp+, you'd need to have 10G ethernet or maybe you can figure our a pci-e riser and an add-in nic. Sometimes, you can share the IPMI nic with the host OS, but I wouldn't count on it, especially for a server like this that was probably built to contract for a specific hoster, not for general sales.

Personally, I'd be looking at the larger servers with more drive bays, but those are more spendy, so :)
 
To me, those are both expensive, but it really depends on how many hours a day this server will be powered, how sensitive you are to noise, and how much physical space and performance you need.

The reason I say this is because older servers come better equipped on ram even though they lack cpu, but also have more storage options in 2u. And depending on how hard you load them, they may not really add up to that much more on your power bill when you factor in 25-50w difference on a 4hr poh daily cycle. Now, it all depends on various parameters, but I've found getting something like an Dell R710 for under $100 is worth the $150 savings because it will take over a year for a more expensive server to get an roi in my use case.

Some food for thought...
 
This server would be placed inside the room I have my router and two computers, I do some video and audio recording too. It would probably be a few hours while I play with it until I find something I might need it 24/7 for. Also, this would be shipped to Costa Rica, so shipping will be expensive, but we don't find severs here like these. :(
 
It depend on what you mean by good (would noise, electricity consumption potential factor, having fun and learn stuff ?), could a relatively recent and very simple used core i3 system do all the server stuff you need in a simpler/quieter/cheaper on the long run way by saving electricity ? That is a cheap way at the moment to take care of having a recent video card supported codec wise at the same time if the media server could use it.

Not to discourage you to try the server grade stuff if you want to learn, but has said above by aware of the potential noise issue, often made for server room not office.
 
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The sound issue does sound important. I have my second computer as you can see in my sig but it is also used for gaming with my gf and since I just ordered a Mikrotik router, switches and everything, thought it might be a good idea to get an old server to host Valheim, Project Zomboid, etc. but I am guessing it might not be worth it in this case. Maybe once I get a server room.
 
Shipping will probably cost more than the price of the actual server too, rack servers are very long and wide so boxes for them are enormous. Same goes with most tower servers since they are usually "rack-convertable" and weigh twice as much. Honestly I'd just buy a cheap recent desktop pc instead since it'll be cheaper to ship, put out less heat and be quieter while taking up less space.
 
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D-EJ915 said:
Shipping will probably cost more than the price of the actual server too, rack servers are very long and wide so boxes for them are enormous. Same goes with most tower servers since they are usually "rack-convertable" and weigh twice as much. Honestly I'd just buy a cheap recent desktop pc instead since it'll be cheaper to ship, put out less heat and be quieter while taking up less space.
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But sometimes you just have to have 512G+ of memory. :)
 
cjcox said:
But a Z840 will do 1.5TB. And of course the newer models, even more.
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Yes, but the z420 wasn't supposed to even work with LRDIMMs and was supposed to be maxed out at 32GB ECC UDIMMs. ;) Hence it's much cheaper used since most people don't know about its LRDIMM support. :)
 
SamirD said:
Yes, but the z420 wasn't supposed to even work with LRDIMMs and was supposed to be maxed out at 32GB ECC UDIMMs. ;) Hence it's much cheaper used since most people don't know about its LRDIMM support. :)
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yeah, but thread started taking on a HEDT turn, so cost sort of went out the door at that point. :)
 
The main advantage of the Xeon v1/v2 is that DDR3 registered RAM is very cheap. So if your workload requires high RAM the cost can be substantially less than with a DDR4 system.

Main disadvantages include noise, lack of USB3 and only 2 SATA ports are SATA3. So if you plan to speed it up with SSDs there will be a limit.
 
uOpt said:
Main disadvantages include noise, lack of USB3 and only 2 SATA ports are SATA3. So if you plan to speed it up with SSDs there will be a limit.
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I can't tell any noise difference between cpu generations since that's just the cooler. And you can get a sas/sata card to move beyond sata 2 and also a usb 3 card if needed for fairly cheap.
 
I haven't tried hosting project zomboid but did play a bunch, but my NAS is hosting valheim, jellyfin, booksonic, and a few wither services concurrently with docker, so you don't need much in terms of power just RAM.

I'm using a terramaster f2-422 for all this but you could probably do it on the f2-220 or 221, pricing around 150 without drives. Just lock down everything on it, TM does some goofy stuff.
 
SamirD said:
I can't tell any noise difference between cpu generations since that's just the cooler. And you can get a sas/sata card to move beyond sata 2 and also a usb 3 card if needed for fairly cheap.
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Could how well they change their powerusage / efficacy by work load change by generation ?

At least at equal cooling spending, I can imagine a recent corei3/celeron beating old generation xeon hardware.

A 10100 or 12100 corei3 with almost 3x time the passmark of a E5-2620 could do the work using way less watts/noise.
 
LukeTbk said:
Could how well they change their powerusage / efficacy by work load change by generation ?

At least at equal cooling spending, I can imagine a recent corei3/celeron beating old generation xeon hardware.

A 10100 or 12100 corei3 with almost 3x time the passmark of a E5-2620 could do the work using way less watts/noise.
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A reduction in power usage usually doesn't do the same for cooling as running fans still make noise. Unless you can stop a fan completely, I don't really hear the difference.

But I also don't care about fan noise as I'd rather things be cool and work. A lot of noise just is filtered out by my ears...just ask my wife! :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
 
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