**Dell PowerEdge T20 Mini Tower Server - Owner Thread**

Hey! Looking to buy one of these with the Xeon chip whilst the cashback offer is on, pretty excited! Saw 32gb of Dell RAM for these going on eBay, so picked that up already. Good to see an owner's thread here for help!

ov_sjo said:

...two Samsung 850 Evo 250gb SSDs which will be mirrored for plex.

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Hi there, just wanted to check with you about the size of the SSDs needed for Plex. I was going to stick in an old 120gb Intel SSD I have kicking about, but seeing you put 500gb in there, I'm starting to think it may not be large enough?

doug_1986 said:

Hi there, just wanted to check with you about the size of the SSDs needed for Plex. I was going to stick in an old 120gb Intel SSD I have kicking about, but seeing you put 500gb in there, I'm starting to think it may not be large enough?

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I have them in a ZFS mirror so ~250 GB capacity. You don't need that much for Plex, although it depends on your cache settings and how much stuff you have configured to sync. Best check with the Plex forums/guides for storage requirements.

Out of interest, how much did you pay for the 32 GB of RAM?

Ah great, thanks I read that enabling the thumbnails so you get a little image as you skip through a film takes huge amounts of space, so I'll be leaving that switched off!

With the RAM, I paid £42 total (£36+ postage). It was this one here - http://ebay.co.uk/itm/191973373939. I think I got a good deal?

doug_1986 said:

Ah great, thanks I read that enabling the thumbnails so you get a little image as you skip through a film takes huge amounts of space, so I'll be leaving that switched off!

With the RAM, I paid £42 total (£36+ postage). It was this one here - http://ebay.co.uk/itm/191973373939. I think I got a good deal?

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Unfortunately it's the wrong RAM. Registered is cheap and plentiful, but you need un-buffered and ended up costing me almost £200 from Crucial.

ov_sjo said:

Unfortunately it's the wrong RAM. Registered is cheap and plentiful, but you need un-buffered and ended up costing me almost £200 from Crucial.

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Ah, that's a shame, never mind! Think I got it for a fair price, so hopefully can shift it on at cost

Guys

Maybe a strange question but has anyone bought the T20 and moved the kit into a smaller case?

Is the MB and power supply standard size?

Just so cheap I can not buy parts cheaper!

Thanks

Quick question, what are the T20s like on electricity bills ? Are they cheapish to run? 24/7?

I will be putting esxi on, but one of my VMs will be running GNS3 and will require a lot of CPU poke for the firewall images, is this xeon going to be up to scratch ? Any networking bods around that may run an instance of GNS3 on these ?

30W - 42W, if you believe the reviews. That's for the top E3-1225 version.

Mine runs Proxmox and 4 VM's 24/7 and I haven't noticed any real hike in my electricity bill from previously running a AMD AM1 system.

So fairly low powered then. Seems reasonable. Thanks. routers are fine in GNS thanks to idle CPU which means with quite a big topology you don't use much cpu. But firewalls do tend to take a bit of resource.

jackboy said:

Guys

Maybe a strange question but has anyone bought the T20 and moved the kit into a smaller case?

Is the MB and power supply standard size?

Just so cheap I can not buy parts cheaper!

Thanks

Click to expand...

It's not a strange question, I bought one with the intention of doing the same thing, although I was intending to use a larger case with more drive bays and better cooling.

The motherboard is standard micro-ATX layout with mounting holes in the usual positions, and the PSU is regular ATX size so no problems there. It does however use a custom non-standard power connector to the motherboard, but obviously this won't be a problem if you're transplanting both together.

The main issue I found is with the front panel connectors which are also non-standard, so if you want to use the innards in a regular ATX/uATX case you'll need to identify the pinouts (not documented in the service manual, needless to say) and cobble together some sort of DIY connectors. I'm sure it's not rocket surgery, but it depends how much trouble you're willing to go to - I'm a lazy so-and-so and in the end I just couldn't be arsed.

Crash

Thanks, this is very helpful.

My aim was to create a NAS for backups, its going to be located outside my house. My current server was cobbled together using spare parts I had and second hand kit and as such uses a FX6300 chip........so not great for a server.

After thinking about this more and as the Xeon chip in the T20 is better than the 6300 (well I think) I am going to use the T20 as the main server and build the NAS from the old server but change the chip or down-clock it to lower power use, not quite sure yet.

Anyway your response gives me the option I need.

Thanks

So, here's a question for you guys...

On the crucial website, on the Dell T20 compatible RAM page, it has this kit -

http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/compatible-upgrade-for//poweredge-t20

Wrong voltage, wrong speed, but crucial certified compatible.

And on that note, if it does work then surely Mac Pro RAM should too, as it's exactly the same spec...

http://www.memory4less.com/hynix-4gb-ddr3-pc14900-hmt451u7afr8c-rd

And because it is provided in Mac pros, there's always a good supply on eBay, for cheap (£7 for 4gb sticks).

Am I missing something obvious? I expect so! I've got my hands on that 16gb crucial kit, but unless one of you guys knows any better, I might get some of the Mac Pro stuff to see if it works.

Alright, this RAM has got me right confused.

Simple question, is this stuff compatible...?

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/ct102472bd160b

On the crucial site it says not, but all the specs look good to me. Whereas the stuff on the crucial site which it says is compatible, the specs look all wrong to me.

Help!!

Anyone know where I can get the higher spec CPU to replace the celeron (or whatever it is) in the basic model?

Oh and Doug, let me know how you get on with the RAM.

Nick

I am pretty sure that when I looked earlier the CPU is more expensive than the whole server once you take off the cashback......

Maybe buy a new Xeon version and sell the old kit not needed.

I bought a Xeon for mine off a well known auction site.

The other thing to consider is that iLo access is disabled on the basic model so you would be better off following jackboy's advice if you want that.

Pants. Ok chaps, cheers.

just bought one of these - I normally self-build all my PCs - but what a bargain these are !

build quality seems great for the money to me

I bought 8gb (2x4) of HyperX Fury 1866 RAM - which I hoped as had JEDEC for it would run at 1600 and indeed runs at 1600 CAS9 1T

after I've claimed the cashback - it'll be £250 all in - crazy really

considering getting another if they extend the cashback - putting a 1050Ti in for a gaming system for my kids (as they constantly hog my main gaming machine !!! lol)