Additional Hardware for HP ProLiant N40L Microserver

SaltandSauce

SaltandSauce

SaltandSauce

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30 May 2012
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146
Alright people,

For me, it looks like Christmas is coming early with the arrival of a new HP Proliant N40L Microserver in the next few days. My plan is to use this sweet little machine as a NAS box throughout the house. Now I know these are great little systems, but from what I’ve been reading, the large majority of users feel the need to upgrade some of the hardware to suit their needs.

Well, after reading through various forums, I came across the following hardware that one user had went ahead and purchased for their own system. Now this thread is only three months old so I can’t imagine the hardware has progressed too much since then. Saying that though, the cost of the hardware may have fallen since the original post.

The hardware/software that that particular user had purchased was the following:

  • Sapphire 11166-02-20R HD 5450 1GB DDR3 PCIE HDMI Graphics Card
  • Western Digital 2TB SATA 6Gbps
  • StarTech 5.25in Trayless Hot Swap Mobile Rack for 3.5in Hard Drive
  • Kingston 8GB DDR3 1333MHz i5 Memory
  • Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011

Now I intend on following the same path but would like to make sure my new server is as up to date as possible, so I guess this is where you guys (and girls) come in. Could you tell me if the recommended hardware is still the best to be going with? If yes, then that’s fantastic. If not, could you point me in the right direction to what you would change?

Any help would be much appreciated and I look forward to reading your comments and suggestions! :)
 
I would think about what you want to actually use it for.

There is no need for a GPU unless you need HDMI for running as an HTPC. I have 6 drives in mine using a neat dual bay adapter which allows 2 x 3.5 HDs to go into the 5.25 bay, can't remember the brand/model though, something like x-wing?

I am using mine with unRAID and there are other alternatives which could save you the windows license. I wouldn't necessarily recommend unRAID currently though due to the development approach and lack of progress.
 
Sorry, I should have been more specific in my initial post. I plan on using the HP Proliant Server as HTPC. Saying that though, I've recently purchased a Raspberry Pi and I'm wondering if there is anyway that I could use that to stream the content to my TV, but firstly, I'm not sure how that would work, and second, I'm not sure if the Raspberry Pi is capable of streaming 1080p content.

With regards to RAID, I think I'm going to go with RAID-5 since I don't want to lose the content that I'll have stored on the machine. I've lost far too much content in the past for being down right lazy and not bothering to backup anything. I'm sure if I go with 4x2TB set up in RAID-5 (through WHS 2011), it would provide me with a total volume of 5.4TB of usable storage space.

I'm not sure if this response answers the questions mentioned above or just adds to the confusion. I guess this is partly the reason I've created this thread in the first place. Any idea people?
 
Any thoughts people? I'm ready to purchase one of these servers now, but at the same time, I could be doing with going ahead and purchasing the additional hardware whilst I'm there.

Is everything mentioned in the original post a suitable upgrade? Is there anything you would change? I've decided that I'll be needing a graphics card for some HDMI output so any feedback would be much appreciated.
 
Anyone? Sorry if this looks like a complete lack of patience. I've just got far too much free time at work and I'm continually refreshing the page hoping someone might have responded. I do apologize, maybe I'm just getting ahead of myself here! :rolleyes:
 
Just on the RPi, yes it will stream 1080p like a dream. Use something like Raspbmc and connect it to you LAN and your flying. Only problem is it won't decode mpeg2. Most of my media is mpeg2 and I couldnt be bothered to encode 500 films so I got rid.

Is that graphics card passive?
 
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