Any reason not to buy a PowerEdge T30
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Soldato
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I’ve been using the very similar T20 as my NAS. The only obvious downside is that you can only easily fit four 3.5” drives and that they can tend to run a bit hot.
I bought mine back when Dell were almost giving them away. I’d have thought long and hard about spending £400+ on one.
There was a cheap T20 on the Member’s Market the other day.
I bought mine back when Dell were almost giving them away. I’d have thought long and hard about spending £400+ on one.
There was a cheap T20 on the Member’s Market the other day.
Soldato
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Not necessarily expensive, just not the no-brainer they were back in 2015.
My Xeon based T20 cost £245 inc. VAT. There was then a cashback offer from Dell that brought it down below £200. Unfortunately, they haven't had offers like that for a while.
My Xeon based T20 cost £245 inc. VAT. There was then a cashback offer from Dell that brought it down below £200. Unfortunately, they haven't had offers like that for a while.
Soldato
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What spec T30 are you looking at?
You might be able to DIY something better or more powerful for the same money
You might be able to DIY something better or more powerful for the same money
It's the base spec: Dell PowerEdge T30 Xeon E3-1225V5 3.3GHz 8GB RAM 1TB HDD. I thought about DIY but have plenty of uncompleted projects
Didn't want any more hassle than installing the OS.
What NAS OS are you planning on running and what else will it be doing?
Are you willing to write off up to £300+ because you can’t justify 30 minutes building a PC? If so then go for it.
If not, then consider your options:
1: Used.
Truth be told, not that much has changed in CPU terms between the v1 and v5 Xeon’s, minor IPC and power savings is about as exciting as it gets, as a NAS is generally going to be idle a lot of the time, then TDP is largely irrelevant. An older T20 or similar will give you pretty much the same user experience, but leave you with a decent chunk of your budget to spend on storage.
Example: I grabbed a Supermicro SC833 with 8 bay hot-swap backplane, X10 board, 4GB ECC and a G3220 and Server 2012 COA for £118, it’s an ideal basic NAS, you could drop a V3 Xeon in and still be under £160 all in.
My R210-II and 1270v1/8GB was about the same with hardware RAID and 2x1TB. It’s been tweaked since then (now SSD) and last I looked was pulling about 45w with minimal load.
2: New.
The Ryzen 2700 has been discounted to below £160 inc cooler, that’s 8c/16t, 8GB of DDR4 will set you back £40 and a suitable case/board from £100, that leaves you £140 to justify spending 30 minutes assembling it, what else could you (legally) be doing that pays £140 for 30 minutes work? Heck you could chuck £140 at a GPU and it would be a very decent gaming PC.
Of course if you aren’t going to notice the hit on buying a new server then nothing at all wrong with the T30, just it’s not really that great and you pay a premium for warranty you are unlikely to use and ‘new’.
Are you willing to write off up to £300+ because you can’t justify 30 minutes building a PC? If so then go for it.
If not, then consider your options:
1: Used.
Truth be told, not that much has changed in CPU terms between the v1 and v5 Xeon’s, minor IPC and power savings is about as exciting as it gets, as a NAS is generally going to be idle a lot of the time, then TDP is largely irrelevant. An older T20 or similar will give you pretty much the same user experience, but leave you with a decent chunk of your budget to spend on storage.
Example: I grabbed a Supermicro SC833 with 8 bay hot-swap backplane, X10 board, 4GB ECC and a G3220 and Server 2012 COA for £118, it’s an ideal basic NAS, you could drop a V3 Xeon in and still be under £160 all in.
My R210-II and 1270v1/8GB was about the same with hardware RAID and 2x1TB. It’s been tweaked since then (now SSD) and last I looked was pulling about 45w with minimal load.
2: New.
The Ryzen 2700 has been discounted to below £160 inc cooler, that’s 8c/16t, 8GB of DDR4 will set you back £40 and a suitable case/board from £100, that leaves you £140 to justify spending 30 minutes assembling it, what else could you (legally) be doing that pays £140 for 30 minutes work? Heck you could chuck £140 at a GPU and it would be a very decent gaming PC.
Of course if you aren’t going to notice the hit on buying a new server then nothing at all wrong with the T30, just it’s not really that great and you pay a premium for warranty you are unlikely to use and ‘new’.
I would be very tempted with a dell or ibm machine second hand.
There is a dell precision system atm with 2x low wattage xeon and 64gb ram for £250
Fairly common as companies dump old stock. This is not rackmount to keep the noise down. £30 on a sata adaptec raid card.
The 6 core low power xeons are £25 for 2, should 2*4 physical cores not be enough
There is a dell precision system atm with 2x low wattage xeon and 64gb ram for £250
Fairly common as companies dump old stock. This is not rackmount to keep the noise down. £30 on a sata adaptec raid card.The 6 core low power xeons are £25 for 2, should 2*4 physical cores not be enough
Soldato
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I would be very tempted with a dell or ibm machine second hand.
There is a dell precision system atm with 2x low wattage xeon and 64gb ram for £250
The 6 core low power xeons are £25 for 2, should 2*4 physical cores not be enough
Which 6 core CPU model are you looking at for that?
L5640, seen two for £17 shipped. That's getting silly.
I needed my ageing HP nl40 and I went for a Dell T20, I think it was £220 off eBay, I went for the Xeon variant as I didn't want the hassle of changing that and selling the old CPU, modding the case took some doing though, I managed to get a drive bay for another couple of drives, added an adaptor for the CD/DVD bay for a 3.5" drive, and an adaptor for one of the existing drive bays to fit in 2 x 2.5" (one SSD), stays nice and cool with 8 drives in place.
Got WHS2011 on it, only has 8GB memory seeing as that's all WHS supports, with BlueIris, Plex, Unifi controller, Drivebender, and a few other minor applications running off it.
Got WHS2011 on it, only has 8GB memory seeing as that's all WHS supports, with BlueIris, Plex, Unifi controller, Drivebender, and a few other minor applications running off it.