Good Cheap Server - HP Proliant Microserver 4 BAY - OWNERS THREAD

Deleted member 138126

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Deleted member 138126

Can anyone fill me in on the cheapest RAM for the N54L.

Looking for 8GB totoal or maybe 16GB total depending on the price. Some of the RAM people have used looks like it costs more then the server (after rebate)!
Hard to compete with an £85 server! e.g. a single 3TB WD Red is £100.
 
Caporegime
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Low profile XFX card ordered plus maddness's Noiseblocker Microserver Silencer Kit™ :D

Next month; an SSD and Blu-ray ROM drive and I will be almost done.
 
Caporegime
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I have an HP Touchpad doing nothing other than being a desk clock, might use it as a remote. What's the best android XBMC remote app. Seem to be quite a few.
 
Caporegime
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This card will not fit in a Microserver. There are no passive nVidia GT610's that do. I got a Zotac GT610 with a fan on it but it's no noisier than the actual Microserver and certainly inaudible when I have something on the telly, even at low volume.

Thanks. I have now checked and you are right. Having said that they seem to be very large heatsinks with 1 small fan in the middle and doesn't look that bad.

Does anyone else have this series of card in their microserver, or indeed any nVidia one that would easily handle outputting all sorts of content to a 1080p display?


rp2000
 
Caporegime
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uncle_rufus - I was going to attempt replacing both fans today as the OcUK order arrived. Only problem is the 40 mm is missing. Bad OcUK! Will let you know how the 120 mm replacement goes.
 
Caporegime
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120 mm fan installed along with a WiFi card and XFX 6450. The fan was fairly easy to replace with the only difficult/tedious part been the filing of the 3 pin header. Noise difference sounds similar (forgot to run my sound meter app beforehand) but I think this just confirms it's the 40 mm fan causing most of the noise.

If I want to install an SSD into one of the four HD bays, what parts do I need? Going to fit a blu-ray next month so don't want to use the 5.25 bay. Do I just need a 3.5 > 2.5 adapter and SATA data/power cables*?

*Serial ATA PSU Converter & data cable
 
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Associate
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120 mm fan installed along with a WiFi card and XFX 6450. The fan was fairly easy to replace with the only difficult/tedious part been the filing of the 3 pin header. Noise difference sounds similar (forgot to run my sound meter app beforehand) but I think this just confirms it's the 40 mm fan causing most of the noise.

If I want to install an SSD into one of the four HD bays, what parts do I need? Going to fit a blu-ray next month so don't want to use the 5.25 bay. Do I just need a 3.5 > 2.5 adapter and SATA data/power cables*?

*Serial ATA PSU Converter & data cable

There is a 2.5 slot under the 5.25 bay which you can use. Will probably need power and sata adaptor to plug it in.

I doubt you'll be able to fit a 2.5 into the 3.5 trays nicely to be honest, but there will be a way.
 
Caporegime
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Thanks. Depending on how my bet goes tonight - will order a Kingston v300 tomorrow or next month. It really does need an SSD! System speed is decent enough but fairly noticeable compared to my main rig with an SSD. XBMC no doubt will benefit greatly.
 
Associate
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Had a microserver delivered and a msi 5450 to use as a HTPC. Installed windows 7 but for the life of me I can't get signal out of the hdmi or dvi ports only the onboard VGA? Any ideas guys? I'm at a complete loss!

5450 doesn't even show up in device manager?
 
Soldato
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Okay so with the end of the month approaching I've been trying to think about what route to go with the server... In particular what to do about populating it with drives. I certainly can't afford to by 4/5/6x WD Red 2/3Tb drives all in one go, but based on my understanding of ZFS I feel like there might be an optimal approach to how to do this.

The problem is that since I can't change the number of disks in the array (for RAIDZ) or buy enough disks to make the array in one go, how can I have my array but keep it upgradeable? I've currently got the following drives:

1x 250Gb (from the microserver)
1x 320Gb (from an old Dell PC I threw out years ago)
1x 1Tb (the storage drive in my current server)
1x 500Gb (in my main PC as a 3rd drive, don't use it for an awful lot)

So lets say I go out and buy 1x WD Red 2Tb to start me off... If I were to swap the 500Gb and the 1Tb over - giving my main PC access to the current storage files for transferring in the process - and then create a 4-drive RAIDZ array out of the 2Tb, 500Gb, 320Gb and 250Gb, then I'd have about 750Gb of usable space (and a lot of wasted space)... But then over the next few months I could progressively replace the smallest drive with a WD Red 2Tb and let the array rebuild, and I'd go from ~750Gb usable to ~960Gb, then ~1.5Tb and finally to ~6.0Tb when the final drive gets replaced. Does that sound right? Am I overlooking any glaring flaws with this idea? Is it bad for the drives etc?
 
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