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

[labcoattech]

Is it still on offer?

 

[DJMK4]

Anyone got any of the 4gb sticks of ram they want to sell off cheap that came with it just for now.

If so how much ? Can you point in to the members market and hook me up

I'm going to be slowly filling up with 8gb sticks eventually but want something to get me going, I'll put up a thread in wanted aswel for 8gb sticks

Is there any cheaper way of doing this to slowly fill up to 32gb

So I ended up getting 2x8gb sticks of this

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

Working absolutely perfectly. Have also found another 4gb module in addition to the one that it came with, so have 24gb total in there now (2x8 + 2x4) all ECC 1600mhz. All good. Total spent on RAM for me is now £60.

My latest issue though... bought a pexsat32 card (the startech 2-port one that Dell recommends), and so far can't see it or the dries plugged into it. Not sure what's going on here, as it should be straight plug and play.

I did manage to get myself a RAID card on ebay though for a good price, so can always try that instead but need to flash it to IT mode first.

How did you manage to get 2 x 8gb sticks for £60 of the crucial ram? I'm not seeing a single 8gb stick less than £55 at the moment

 

[ov_sjo]

Just got a promotional email through this morning, a certain reseller are doing the T20 for £169.95+vat after rebate.

 

[Buckster]

Been that price for at least 3 weeks

 

[AyeAyeAhoy!]

How did you manage to get 2 x 8gb sticks for £60 of the crucial ram? I'm not seeing a single 8gb stick less than £55 at the moment

I actually got them for £50

£60 includes a £10 4gb stick.

Found the 8gb sticks on reddit r/hardwareswapuk, and the 4gb on eBay. Have since seen more 8gb sticks going for the same price on AVF classifieds, but they've gone now.

Just keep your ear to the ground

 

[DJMK4]

I actually got them for £50

£60 includes a £10 4gb stick.

Found the 8gb sticks on reddit r/hardwareswapuk, and the 4gb on eBay. Have since seen more 8gb sticks going for the same price on AVF classifieds, but they've gone now.

Just keep your ear to the ground

Will do

Also is it worth going for non ECC ram seeing as it works and maybe cheaper ? Edit: doesnt appear to have any difference in price

 

[Blinkz]

Hey guys,

I'm looking at getting a T20 to replace my N40L which is starting to show it's age! Going for the Xeon as want it to be able to transcode Plex, on top of that will just be a file server, sql server and run sickrage etc.

Is there a limit to storage? Found some places saying it's a max of 13tb?

Also I want to fill all 4 of the 3.5 inch with WD reds, so is it easy enough to put an SSD in the 5.25 inch bay and boot from it?

Thanks!

 

[Buckster]

you could try .. but there are only 4 SATA ports

unless any of them will multi-drive ??

so I think you'd need a SATA PCI-E card

I've 2 N54Ls ... and the T20 is light speed in comparison - for the price its a bargain

 

[Buffalo2102]

Hey guys,

I'm looking at getting a T20 to replace my N40L which is starting to show it's age! Going for the Xeon as want it to be able to transcode Plex, on top of that will just be a file server, sql server and run sickrage etc.

Is there a limit to storage? Found some places saying it's a max of 13tb?

Also I want to fill all 4 of the 3.5 inch with WD reds, so is it easy enough to put an SSD in the 5.25 inch bay and boot from it?

Thanks!

The T20 has 4 SSD bays as well as the 4 HDD caddies and 5.25" bay. As Buckster says, the issue is with SATA data and power connectors so you will need some molex-sata power cables and an add-in SATA card. Ignore - see below.

 

[CaptainCrash]

Is there a limit to storage? Found some places saying it's a max of 13tb?

Also I want to fill all 4 of the 3.5 inch with WD reds, so is it easy enough to put an SSD in the 5.25 inch bay and boot from it?

Thanks!

There's only two inbuilt 2.5" bays, in the space where the slimline optical drive would otherwise go. That will obviously be fine for a single SSD, but if you do want to use more than two 2.5" drives it's fairly simple to plop in a 4x 2.5" cage under the upper inbuilt 3.5" bays as mentioned earlier in the thread.

Don't get Molex-SATA adapters, the T20's PSU doesn't have any Molex connectors so it would be rather pointless. You can get SATA-SATA daisy-chain extender cables for a few quid on the bay or from the rainforest, but if you're planning to use one or both of the top 2.5" bays make sure they're the thin bare-strand type that will bend easily (ie without any fancy thick outer sleeve), or you'll be saying some bad words when you try to squeeze them in to fit. Also make sure they have straight in-line (not right-angled) end connectors or there will be more bad words.

I haven't seen anything about a 13TB limit - you could check out the homeservershow.com forums where people are using >20 TB without any apparent problems.

 

[Buffalo2102]

The T20 has 4 SSD bays as well as the 4 HDD caddies and 5.25" bay. As Buckster says, the issue is with SATA data and power connectors so you will need some molex-sata power cables and an add-in SATA card.

OMG, sorry for this very bad advice. I was thinking of a completely different build

As Captain Crash says, SATA power multiplier/extensions are what is required. I have installed a 2 x SSD adapter beneath the front HDD bays, as he suggests.

 

[PurplePhoenix]

Anyone got any of the 4gb sticks of ram they want to sell off cheap that came with it just for now.

If so how much ? Can you point in to the members market and hook me up

I'm going to be slowly filling up with 8gb sticks eventually but want something to get me going, I'll put up a thread in wanted aswel for 8gb sticks

Is there any cheaper way of doing this to slowly fill up to 32gb

You dont need ECC . I am running 4x4 non ecc memory from a box at work I found. I also ran 2133 mhz viper ram as well.

 

[decto]

Will do

Also is it worth going for non ECC ram seeing as it works and maybe cheaper ? Edit: doesnt appear to have any difference in price

I found the same, Cheapest DDR3 ECC Udimm around £100 for 2x8GB, or around £25 for a 4GB if you want Kingston or Crucial. Non ECC can get branded for around £82 for 2x8GB

Depends what you plan to do with it, my old WHS server has been running for nearly 6 years on Non ECC without issue, however given the small price difference, ECC can't hurt.

Cheapest option would be to get a single 4GB stick,then a pair of 8GB to give you 24GB. If you find yourself running out, add more but 24GB is a lot for a single CPU.

AD

Rapidly coming to the conclusion there is no such thing as a 'cheap' home server

 

[ov_sjo]

Here are my two.. finally in the cupboard.. some cable tidying required

 

[DJMK4]

I'm going to purchase an 8gb stick which will add to the 4. This will be enough for my term server/gns box and also my f5 big IP pair and ubuntu webserver.

I'll get another 8gb stick in a month or so.

Because of work getting busy at the moment I have not had much time to play around with it yet however esxi 6 booting from usb. Have datastore 1 setup and 2 VMS spun up with a small amount of base config on. Albeit maxes out the ram until I get the chance to go shopping on the first 8gb stick

 

[easyrider]

Just had an email from Dell validating my cashback

whoopee!

 

[Etheco]

System is awesome now it has 16GB ram, Hardly eats into my swap thankfully now too so stuff is speedy

 

[[RB]]

So, after some considerable time, the server transplant is now finished. (Original Posts with details here & here)

This is after me realising the on-board SATA ports had died for some reason (Dell's service in getting the board replaced was pretty flawless - obviously I had to put the motherboard back into the original case ) and also accepting that trying to squeeze the drives into the new case drive bays was optimistic at best.

I purchased the 3 x 5.25" to 5 x 3.5" bay converter to match the case Here and replaced the 120mm fan that came with it with this one from OCUK. This also enabled me to connect it to the PWM splitter I'd purchased previously.

Pics (excuse the quality):

Still tight but the bay converter gives a little more room and enabled me to add the 1TB drive I got with the T20 into the mix. In theory I could still fit 2 more 2.5" drives into the thing if needs be on the remaining SATA ports but I think what I have will do for now.

This is now running the Dell ESXI 6.5 image booting from the USB drive.

I have the 256GB SSD and 1TB Mechanical setup as datastores.

Main use is running Nas4Free with the M1015 hardware pass-through enabled to connect the remaining mechanical drives into two ZFS pools.

Also running WHS2011 for random download duties.

Plex is now working flawlessly as the old servers didn't have enough grunt to be able to transcode when it was needed

Power usage according to my cheap checker puts it at 80W at Idle, 180W at boot time. Admittedly, and foolish of me, I've not tested it when doing anything stressful but hopefully it's no where near the 290W.

It's also kicking out a fair amount more heat than the two previous micro servers so I've had to stick a 1U cooling fan tray (2 x 120mm DC fans) into the rack to keep the airflow up.

Final thoughts on this would definitely bring me back to my original feelings to not bother and simply buy 4 bigger capacity drives and stick with the original case!

 

[ov_sjo]

You wanna get that % used down on tank as that will cripple the ZFS performance.

 

[[RB]]

Next on my list of things to do is have a bit of a data tidy!