HP 704941-421 ProLiant Micro Server

[Craig321]

Hi,

I'm looking to possibly get a HP 704941-421 ProLiant Micro Server to replace my old desktop PC that's currently acting as my server and taking unnecessary power as it has a big graphic card etc. plus I think it may have just failed as I can't get on it and a reboot didn't help.

I'm open to other servers or NAS devices as well if they're in the same price and better than the HP.

I have four disks I can put in: 2x 1.5TB and 2x 2TB.

The plan:
- Buy the server, which is around £210 at the moment
- Put my four existing disks from my desktop in using RAIDZ1 which should give me roughly 4.5TB
- Buy a 4TB external backup drive that will sit on top of the HP, online backup unrecoverable stuff in case of theft/fire etc.
- Run FreeNAS along with sabnzbd, etc.

A few questions:
Are they any good?
How much power do they actually take?
How noisy are they?

Thanks.

 

[Craig321]

A quick look halfway down this forum section would have shown you that this thread has everything you need to know:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18216324

That was started in 2010 and I didn't really feel like trawling through 99 pages of comments (and I'm on 80 posts per page mode!).

They are pretty good for an inexpensive server, even more so when HP have the £100 off offer.

Im sure some one in the main thread said they use 35W in normal running (not 100% sure though)

AS for noise, some say they are noisy some say they arnt, compared to a "normal" server they are quite quiet but the main cause of noise is the PSU fan but if you look through the main thread there are instructions and part numbers for replacing the 2 fans in the server.

The main noise then is the harddrives and that changes depending on he manufacturer.

Thanks - even if it ran at 50w that wouldn't be expensive, much better than my old PC I used to use as a server.

Hmmm noise is a little off putting as even if I had it sitting next to my main desktop machine I don't really want to hear it. S'pose I can replace the fans as you say though & they look nice and small so can hopefully find somewhere to stick it where it won't be heard.

 

[Craig321]

Silent you say!? In which case there's no chance I'd hear it over my main PC, not that it's noisy but you can hear it.

Very tempted! Would be nice to be rid of all these drives from my desktop machine and have them in a nice RAIDZ1 setup with FreeNAS etc.