HP Micro Server or Something else for media server?

[vail3r]

Currently looking to upgrade my home media server. I currently have an Acer Veriton and 4 external hard drives that I have created a pool from as my storage but I'm wanting to get rid of having the external drives as its a bit messy.

I don't want to spend more than £200 so I have seen a few of the Gen 8 i3 Microservers I can pick up for a little less than that but have also noticed on eBay a HP Proliant ML310 which seems very similar to the Microserver just in a bigger shell that might give me more upgrade options in the future.

It's going to be used to store my Plex Server on and also serve as my backup for my desktop.

Ideally I'd love the micro server due to its small size but I can probably run a new cable to somewhere else if I'm better off just getting something bigger.

Any advice is appreciated as I can't make my mind up!

 

[vail3r]

What OS are you likely to be using (As that may influence your choice to some degree)?

The main advantage of a Microserver or indeed a bigger Proliant comes down to ECC memory support, which is a lot harder to get in any form factor without spending a reasonable amount of cash.

Ideally Windows Server as I already have a licence and I know how everything works so I could set everything back up as it was pretty easily.

 

[vail3r]

Thanks for all the input I've ended up grabbing a old Fujitsu server from eBay for £60 with a Xeon that's not too bad and ordered some more ram for £30 to take it to 24gb. Going to spend the extra money on an another hard drive and will see how I get on for now.

It is 90% local use in the house and after checking over the past week 99% of stuff does direct play so it's only very occasional transcoding.