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

crinkleshoes · 5 May 2016 at 21:47

Gen8 isn't horrifically noisy... but it's too noisy for me to be happy with it sitting in my home office or as an HTPC... but then I like things properly silent which is why I build a fanless htpc.

nox_uk · 5 May 2016 at 23:45

Gen 8 can be noisey or quiet

new one at work is dead silent, it has two wd reds in it. Mine at home is not silent, it's got two hgst drives, it's not mega noisy either. Just the fan speed is higher. Also the psu fan makes noise at home, that's really irritating, louder than the big fan. But the disks spinning up are louder so... Hope that puts it in perspective

Nox

crinkleshoes · 6 May 2016 at 00:18

Fans in mine are noisier than the WD Reds...

Trig · 6 May 2016 at 14:18

Gen8 can vary on settings and kit inside it, my fan sits at 16% but thats with an E3-1260L, P222, SDM with a pair of SSD's on it and 4 spinners in the bays.

I do have a small fan pointed at the P222 which really helps.

boxman2000 · 6 May 2016 at 21:54

Ok so I've spent 3 hours getting nowhere tonight on my N54L.

Basically it was running sweet as a nut on W7 Pro but for some stupid reason I thought I'd go for the W10 upgrade... since then the broadcom driver stopped working. Tried downloading the latest driver but it seems from investigation that it requires a BIOS flash (I'm on 2011 version and need to get onto 2013.10.01).

Now I've managed to source SP64420.exe and create a bootable USB drive but this is where I get stuck - the Microserver just will not boot from the USB drive. I've changed every setting I can see and nothing. I know there is a modded bios which I haven't tried yet as most links I've found for either original HP or modded bios are dead.

Any help would be really appreciated as this isn't an area I've had much experience with. Thanks

ANDARIAL · 7 May 2016 at 07:06

I had same problem.could not get w10 to run with network running.I rolled back to w7 and network still not working,had to do a fresh install to get my n54l working properly again.think I reported this earlier in this thread somewhere.hope you find a fix though

boxman2000 · 7 May 2016 at 08:02

Cheers. I've read bios update sorts this but for some reason the bootable USB does not work.

ANDARIAL · 7 May 2016 at 08:50

Just remembered that I have used the hacked bios to enable full speed on the op sata port
Don`t know if this is the reason for my trouble when updating to W10

Quartz · 7 May 2016 at 10:26

boxman2000 said:
Now I've managed to source SP64420.exe and create a bootable USB drive but this is where I get stuck - the Microserver just will not boot from the USB drive.

Are you using the internal USB socket?

boxman2000 · 7 May 2016 at 20:03

Quartz said:
Are you using the internal USB socket?

No. Hadn't realised I needed to. Give it a try now.

Edit - great, well it was a combination of this advice and a few other things, main one was that the usb stick, although worked with the USB bios creation tool, it didn't show up on the Microserver.

Another thing I did was ensure all the files were on the stick as this creation tool didn't copy all files over - I went to where the flat files were (default C:\SWSetup\SP64420) and copied the lot onto the USB drive, replacing any duplicate files (only one for me). I ended up with the following:

Swapping over to a different USB drive enabled me to see and select the USB drive as primary boot in the bios. Restarted and bios update ran perfectly (I used internal USB socket but seen tutorial where external socket used but I wasn't going to argue - it worked).

Once loaded the network card didn't actually work. I read one piece of advice which was to go into bios and select 'optimised settings' but stupidly I missed F10 prompt and loaded straight into W10 - low and behold the network connected and all is fine!

One of the most bizarre issues I've experienced but pleased that after 6 hours I've managed to sort it.

This issue does appear to impact Windows 10, Windows 8 and Server 2012 r2 that I know of and of course the difficulty in getting latest bios with these Microservers is like hens teeth as most people, when they experience this issue, have no warranty left which is the only way HP supply drivers.

Hope this may help someone some day - trust me if you need bios files as they were a pig to find.

nox_uk · 8 May 2016 at 09:54

Trig said:
Gen8 can vary on settings and kit inside it, my fan sits at 16% but thats with an E3-1260L, P222, SDM with a pair of SSD's on it and 4 spinners in the bays.

I do have a small fan pointed at the P222 which really helps.

Nice - went with the 1265lv2 myself and an extra two network ports

tried the ssd route from the optical drive slot then realised that with VMware being such a small footprint it really didn't matter if it was on platters or the ssd. Really tempted to buy a different colour front for it at the moment!

Nox

Trig · 8 May 2016 at 11:27

Yeah I've seen a few coloured front plates, Cheaper to rattle can it tho and you get to pick the colour lol

nox_uk · 8 May 2016 at 19:49

I have historically never failed to include fluff in my paint jobs

So I've given up on that line of attack!

Nox

Blinkz · 9 May 2016 at 12:35

Hey folks,

I've been running a N40L for years now with Win7 as a torrent box, plex server and also running kodi using a GFX card to output to a tv. It runs a SSD which is in the 5.25 bay with 4 HDDs of varying sizes as jbod.

Its been doing a good job however recently its been crashing a lot, I've just run memtest and its shown that some of it is dodgy!

I've seen this now as a sign to upgrade to something with a little more umpf (I'd been looking for an excuse!) so now looking at options.

Will the Gen8s do what I want? Or would the Dell T20 be a better bet? I've been experimenting with using rpi2 as the kodi front end but they still seem to struggle a little with high quality videos. Can I install a GFX card in either server with no issues?

Any suggestions would be welcome!

Amleto · 9 May 2016 at 17:05

The gen8's optical drive is slimline so you can't fit an SSD in there. There are ways to install an SSD, but it needs a custom bracket as I understand. The gen8 has a slot for a gfx card....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDjixc6ybVw

GDL · 9 May 2016 at 22:09

Amleto said:
The gen8's optical drive is slimline so you can't fit an SSD in there. There are ways to install an SSD, but it needs a custom bracket as I understand. The gen8 has a slot for a gfx card....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDjixc6ybVw

You can fit two SSD's in the top bay, as long as you don't mind them not screwed in and you're creative with the cable routing.

Trig · 9 May 2016 at 23:54

Amleto said:
The gen8's optical drive is slimline so you can't fit an SSD in there. There are ways to install an SSD, but it needs a custom bracket as I understand.

Yeah you can, there's room for 2x 2.5" drives under where the optical drive goes, I had mine in there before I got my SDM, or if you have the optical drive you can wedge one behind it and resting on top of the fan in the back, theres room inside the Gen8 for at least 11 drives, cabling and power is a PITA tho the more you have hence why I'm looking at having a Gen7's drive bays connected via the P222's external port...

nutcase · 10 May 2016 at 08:50

4x 3.5" (or 4x 2.5" in adapters), 4x 2.5" down the side of the PSU using a schoondoggy bracket, and 1 or 2 x 2.5" in the top - 1 can be held securely or two taped in or something like that. So at least 13 securely, or 14 if you don't mind the top two flapping about a bit

Trig · 10 May 2016 at 12:29

Not sure if thats my maths or yours thats out there chap...
4 in the bays
4 in an SDM
1 or 2 in the top

=9 or 10...?

Where are you putting the other 3/4 drives?

Blinkz · 10 May 2016 at 12:49

Is there any issue putting a SSD, or a GFX for that matter in the Gen8? I read somewhere that if LILO doesn't get correct temp info it puts the fans to high and so its crazy loud? Is that still the case?

Can the SSD in the optical bay run at a decent speed? We had to do the BIOS mod for the N40L, is it something similar for the Gen8?