HP Micro Server or Something else for media server?

[vail3r]

Currently looking to upgrade my home media server. I currently have an Acer Veriton and 4 external hard drives that I have created a pool from as my storage but I'm wanting to get rid of having the external drives as its a bit messy.

I don't want to spend more than £200 so I have seen a few of the Gen 8 i3 Microservers I can pick up for a little less than that but have also noticed on eBay a HP Proliant ML310 which seems very similar to the Microserver just in a bigger shell that might give me more upgrade options in the future.

It's going to be used to store my Plex Server on and also serve as my backup for my desktop.

Ideally I'd love the micro server due to its small size but I can probably run a new cable to somewhere else if I'm better off just getting something bigger.

Any advice is appreciated as I can't make my mind up!

 

[Armageus]

What OS are you likely to be using (As that may influence your choice to some degree)?

The main advantage of a Microserver or indeed a bigger Proliant comes down to ECC memory support, which is a lot harder to get in any form factor without spending a reasonable amount of cash.

 

[vail3r]

What OS are you likely to be using (As that may influence your choice to some degree)?

The main advantage of a Microserver or indeed a bigger Proliant comes down to ECC memory support, which is a lot harder to get in any form factor without spending a reasonable amount of cash.

Ideally Windows Server as I already have a licence and I know how everything works so I could set everything back up as it was pretty easily.

 

[BongoHunter]

Currently looking to upgrade my home media server. I currently have an Acer Veriton and 4 external hard drives that I have created a pool from as my storage but I'm wanting to get rid of having the external drives as its a bit messy.

I don't want to spend more than £200 so I have seen a few of the Gen 8 i3 Microservers I can pick up for a little less than that but have also noticed on eBay a HP Proliant ML310 which seems very similar to the Microserver just in a bigger shell that might give me more upgrade options in the future.

It's going to be used to store my Plex Server on and also serve as my backup for my desktop.

Ideally I'd love the micro server due to its small size but I can probably run a new cable to somewhere else if I'm better off just getting something bigger.

Any advice is appreciated as I can't make my mind up!

Have your though about a DIY build? Shopping around I think you could something like this:
My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x AMD Ryzen 3 3200G Quad Core 4.0GHz (Socket AM4) APU with RX Vega 8 Graphics - Retail= £98.99
• 1 x ASUS PRIME B450M-K (Socket AM4) DDR4 MATX Motherboard= £69.98
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (2x4GB) DDR4 PC4-24000C16 3000MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK8GX4M2C3000= £41.99

Total: £221.46 (includes shipping: £10.50)
​

The 3200G can be had for about £80, 8GB of RAM will be about £30 - and there's easily a Mobo out there that will do the job for £60 somewhere (or less if going for the 320 chipset.)

Still need a case with room for 4 HDDs and PSU though so would be slightly over budget.

If your willing to buy second hand bits you could do a DIY build for about £200 I think - probably going to be more powerful than an older microserver as well

 

[Avalon]

I wouldn’t pay £200 for a micro server at this stage, you can build or buy something much more capable. The usage criteria is slightly vague, as is the advice:

If you intend to transcode, Intel iGPU (aim for 6th gen onwards if H265 comes into it) or a reasonable Ryzen is a better shout, but if your main usage is local, then unless you make really poor media choices or have really poor clients, you shouldn’t need to transcode. Personally windows is not a great choice for Plex, but being familiar with an OS obviously has value and you make no mention of high concurrent user counts.

 

[vail3r]

Thanks for all the input I've ended up grabbing a old Fujitsu server from eBay for £60 with a Xeon that's not too bad and ordered some more ram for £30 to take it to 24gb. Going to spend the extra money on an another hard drive and will see how I get on for now.

It is 90% local use in the house and after checking over the past week 99% of stuff does direct play so it's only very occasional transcoding.