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

Beans on toast Dave · 19 Aug 2020 at 18:09

have a gen microsever, has anyone had an issue where the fan spins up then spins at normal speed
this seems to follow a powercut, reset the bios and its much better but still does it occasionally, never noticed it before

decmatt · 22 Aug 2020 at 09:55

Beans on toast Dave said:
have a gen microsever, has anyone had an issue where the fan spins up then spins at normal speed
this seems to follow a powercut, reset the bios and its much better but still does it occasionally, never noticed it before

I had an issue where the fan would only blow at full speed, and it was the fan connector shorted

Beans on toast Dave · 22 Aug 2020 at 10:06

decmatt said:
I had an issue where the fan would only blow at full speed, and it was the fan connector shorted

thanks for the reply, i did eventually sort it, noticed ilo was reporting an error no matter what i did it would not clear so disabled ilo and the fan issue stopped
looking online the error is somthing to do with the NAND memory

working fine now, never used ilo anyway

niggyg · 5 Sep 2020 at 21:04

My N40L is still going strong. Are there any limitations on hard disk size? I'm just about running out of space. Any recommendations on models for storage?

Avalon · 6 Sep 2020 at 09:08

niggyg said:
My N40L is still going strong. Are there any limitations on hard disk size? I'm just about running out of space. Any recommendations on models for storage?

Short version is no limit you need to worry about and whatever you feel comfortable with from a £/TB perspective and fits with your current storage approach.

OpenToSuggestions · 19 Sep 2020 at 12:44

I posted a while back about my Gen8 now having an i3-3240 CPU, a 250W PSU and a 1030.
Now I have a 4k AV Receiver and a 4k tele, I would like to watch 4k videos.

As the 1030 doesn't seem to have any onboard decoding, the CPU does it all. It gets pinned at 100% load and simply cannot keep up, even on Youtube. The video stutters often, but are OK at 1440p.

A Xeon E3 1220 V2 is very cheap (~£15) and is 4 core. It is pretty much the same speed aside from 4 cores 4 threads whereas the i3 is 2 cores 4 threads. Benchmarks suggest this should be enough since the multicore performance is ~80% better?
Alternatively I can go for a 1240 V2 or 1270 V2 but these are £45+. These have both a clock speed increase and are 4 core 8 threads. This would definitely solve the problem.

BongoHunter · 19 Sep 2020 at 13:12

OpenToSuggestions said:
I posted a while back about my Gen8 now having an i3-3240 CPU, a 250W PSU and a 1030.
Now I have a 4k AV Receiver and a 4k tele, I would like to watch 4k videos.

As the 1030 doesn't seem to have any onboard decoding, the CPU does it all. It gets pinned at 100% load and simply cannot keep up, even on Youtube. The video stutters often, but are OK at 1440p.

A Xeon E3 1220 V2 is very cheap (~£15) and is 4 core. It is pretty much the same speed aside from 4 cores 4 threads whereas the i3 is 2 cores 4 threads. Benchmarks suggest this should be enough since the multicore performance is ~80% better?
Alternatively I can go for a 1240 V2 or 1270 V2 but these are £45+. These have both a clock speed increase and are 4 core 8 threads. This would definitely solve the problem.

I don't do a lot of AV type stuff with my gear at home - but if you have you files in the right format on the server do you even need to be able encode?

OpenToSuggestions · 19 Sep 2020 at 13:55

BongoHunter said:
I don't do a lot of AV type stuff with my gear at home - but if you have you files in the right format on the server do you even need to be able encode?

I had not considered this - I shall have a nose thanks. I would definitely like to be able to watch 4k Youtube though

.

OpenToSuggestions · 29 Sep 2020 at 22:32

Fitted a Xeon E3-1240 V2 CPU to my gen 8 today.
Works just fine.

Journey · 30 Sep 2020 at 20:13

Any body seen any cheap RAM for the Gen8's, I've just been given 3 of them but they only have 2GB in each machine, would like to push that to 8GB in two and 16GB in the other, might also put some Xeon 'L's' in two of them. Or I might sell them all, and just keep the one I already have.

Mel_P · 30 Sep 2020 at 22:38

OpenToSuggestions said:
Fitted a Xeon E3-1240 V2 CPU to my gen 8 today.
Works just fine.

£50-£120! I only paid £130 for Gen 8 new. Is it woth it if just used as a backup server?

HEADRAT · 1 Oct 2020 at 05:51

Mel_P said:
£50-£120! I only paid £130 for Gen 8 new. Is it woth it if just used as a backup server?

Well your use case might be a backup server but if you want to do a bit of PLEX transcoding or some virtual machines the extra CPU horsepower is going to help.

joelk2 · 1 Oct 2020 at 14:48

I have an N54L it's playing up big time so am going to copy everything off and reinstall an OS on it. Currently I'm using WHS11 but am thinking of switching it up. Xpeneology or other. What's the easiest to setup? Don't want to go whs again.

Used for file storage and a single 1080p transcode direct play.

EssexBoy · 1 Oct 2020 at 17:00

Xpenology does all that fine and i still use it for that purpose.Mine is on DSM 6.1.7-15284 Update 3

HEADRAT · 1 Oct 2020 at 17:03

Yeah I'm using Xpenology, just too lazy to migrate away to anything else, "if it ain't broke" etc.

If I was starting form scratch I might look at FREENAS/UNRAID or OpenMediaVault, all of these will run most popular packages.

I've stopped using the Xpenology packages and now run:

PLEX
SONARR
RADARR
Portainer
SABNZB
etc.

with Docker.

Xpenology is pretty easy to setup, you just need to be cautious around upgrades etc, I've never really had too much of an issue, there I've cursed it now I expect it to be broken by the time I get home!!!

I did have one issues where a package filled up my USB but that's was just "one of those things"

EssexBoy · 1 Oct 2020 at 17:06

As above if looking for the easier route maybe look elsewhere.

Mel_P · 1 Oct 2020 at 17:10

HEADRAT said:
Well your use case might be a backup server but if you want to do a bit of PLEX transcoding or some virtual machines the extra CPU horsepower is going to help.

Agreed!

HEADRAT · 1 Oct 2020 at 17:12

Mel_P said:
Agreed!

Also while I do agree that E3-1240 V2 can be a little pricey it's a plug-n-play solution, you just chuck in the CPU and bosh/done. (I've never had any problems with heat etc)

Compared what you'd pay for a similar spec'd NAS it's still chicken feed, this it what made the Gen8 such a good buy. It's now probably the oldest bit of PC kit I now own, hasn't really missed a beat, I think it's been on for 24/7 for the last 4 years (odd reboot/power cut).

OpenToSuggestions · 1 Oct 2020 at 17:54

Mel_P said:
£50-£120! I only paid £130 for Gen 8 new. Is it woth it if just used as a backup server?

The pc was too slow to watch 4k on. The CPU was the cheapest route home

.

Benchmarks show that the E3 1240 V2 is over twice the power of the i3 3240.
Definitely worth £45.

Despite the age of the gen8 I do enjoy the cheap upgrades.

Avalon · 8 Oct 2020 at 08:57

EssexBoy said:
Xpenology does all that fine and i still use it for that purpose.Mine is on DSM 6.1.7-15284 Update 3

Xpenology is just bodged pirated software by another name. It’s slightly tragic when free or inexpensive options exist and people still insist on openly stealing commercial software, especially when major updates have a nasty habit of breaking. One of the many *NAS derivatives or UnRAID is generally a better choice depending on exactly what you need IO wise (UnRAID is potentially less suited to heavy IO).