Right now I use an old Dell compaq (i3 3220, 12GB RAM, small SSD + 2TB HDD)

I use it for Owncloud, game hosting and automatic media management.

I want to upgrade to something more solid and with parity so I can actually use it for more than movies that I would be sad when lost but nothing world-ending. Plan is to use TrueNAS and throw maybe 4x 8TB drives in there with raidz1 with thy ability to add more later. And move all my docker stacks there.

I found a local seller of old refurbished servers and the prices and capabilities look very good but I want to go through reddit homelab experts first.

some of the good looking listings listings: (Prices converted from CZK to EUR)

  • Dell PowerEdge R610 12-Core 2.26 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core L5640 | 8 GB | 6x SFF | 6/I | iDRAC6 | 4x 1Gb Ethernet ) - 74€
  • IBM System x3630 M3 12-Core 2.26 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core L5640 | 16+ GB | 14 disků 3.5" | ServeRAID M5015 | IMM port | 2x 1Gb Ethernet ) - 102€
  • Dell PowerEdge R620 12-Core 2.00 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core E5-2630L | 16+ GB RAM | 8/10 disků 2.5" | 1Gb/10Gb | Ethernet/SFP+ ) - 139€
  • Dell PowerEdge R510 12-Core 2.27 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core Intel L5640 | 16 GB | 12x LFF | H700 | iDRAC6 | 2x 1Gb Ethernet ) - 167€
  • Dell PowerEdge R620 v2 12-Core 2.40 GHz Low Power ( 2x 6-Core E5-2630Lv2 | 16+ GB RAM | 8/10 disků 2.5" | 1Gb/10Gb | Ethernet/SFP+ ) - 198€

and many, many more (you can check the link above).

Big plus is most of them have 2 year warranty.

Questions:

  1. Are they worth it? Can I find something better elsewhere?

  2. power consumption is bad right? :D. Could I turn one CPU off or take one out entirely?

  3. noise - can the fans be adjusted so it’s actually usable somewhere where people live. Or can I upgrade the fans to something more manageable?

  •  hannsr   ( @hannsr@alien.top ) BEnglish
    1•1 year ago

    In short: no. In longer: hell no.

    Jokes aside, everything that comes with a Xeon L is ancient and will draw a lot of power for not very much performance. In fact, I think your i3 might be more powerful than those R610.

    Those R620 may still be ok, but they are also getting really old now. They will be very noisy - if you haven’t run a server like those at home, you’ll be surprised how loud those are. Imagine a vacuum running constantly in your room. That noisy. You can’t do much about that, they simply need a ton of airflow, so more quiet fans would most likely lead to overheating.

    For your use case I would simply go with a used desktop (not the tiny ones, a regular sized one), add a HBA for more drives and call it a day. Those are cheap, roughly 70-80€ for a used 7th gen i5. The bigger ones might even be cheaper because most people want the sff or tiny versions. A used LSI HBA with IT mode may be another 30-40€ or so. That system will sip power and most likely won’t be audible. If it is, swap in silent fans and done.

    If you do want a rack mount, ipmi, and so on, I’d go the diy route with a Xeon e3 v5/6. Gen system. Those are plenty powerful and don’t draw too much power. Downside is they mostly exclusively use ECC UDIMM which is rather rare and expensive in the used market.