N54L, Time for an upgrade :(

[martynbez]

Hi All,

Had my HP N54L Microserver for a good few years now and it's starting to hold me back on what I want from a home lab. I have 4 vm's running on esxi but my builds are becoming more complex and need more cpu and mem. With 16GB in it at the moment there is not much more I can do with it.

So looking for something on a £200 budget to run ESXi 6.5 ideally. Been looking at the HP Gen8 microservers and the Dell T20's. Any other idea's?

 

[Deleted member 138126]

Gen8 Microserver is a nice little upgrade from N54L, but still limited to 16GB RAM. The Dell T130 can take up to 64GB, although it will be very expensive as it only has 4 slots.

 

[martynbez]

Seen some Gen 8's with xeon's in them so that could be an option.

 

[Silicon Si]

The Dell t20 with the xeon you can pick up for about £238 is not bad I bought one about 4 weeks ago. I paid an extra £19 for next day warranty for 3 years.

 

[martynbez]

Cheapest I have seen is £280 at the moment.

 

[Silicon Si]

Cheapest I have seen is £280 at the moment.

Sorry your right i was quoting without VAT I thought I paid more but I got some ram etc as well at the same time so I forgot about the VAT.

 

[Caracus2k]

Lenovo ts150 for about £190 with a pentium g4400 and 8gb ram and upgrade... if buying new is an option.

Can take up to 64gb ram with a speedy xeon CPU upgrade as well

 

[DJMK4]

Dell T20 deffo. Xeon

 

[hyperseven]

Dell R710 loads on the bay, configured how you want.

 

[Conanius]

I bought a Dell T5500 a while back - dual hex core xeon and fully populated with 72GB RAM. Granted it isn't a modern CPU architecture, but these are very affordable for the power.

Thinking about it though, I'm not sure if it would run ESXi 6.5...

Dell T20 Xeon is a great option though, very well spec'd for the price.