Opinions on HP ProLiant ML115 G5

I've been looking for the same thing, but haven't been able to track anything down. I was in two minds whether to go with the dual Xeon ML110 instead, but decided that I'd probably need four cores (and RAID 5) more than the slightly faster clock speed and larger cache.

I'm currently installing XP on mine (it arrived a couple of hours ago) so I'll do a few quick benchmarks when it's up and running. Mine is only the base configuration, so I'd imagine that the 512MB of RAM will feel a tad slow.

From first impressions, it's a nice little machine (the case is quite small) and doesn't feel too tinny for a steel case. The fans are incredibly loud during the POST process, but it's barely audible when running and is definitely much, much quieter than my old machine.

One really nifty feature is a USB port inside the case to allow you to use a USB pen drive inside. I've got a 50p USB SD card reader on the way to stick in that with an old SDHC card. The idea is to stick VMWare ESXi on that card, stick in 4-8GB of RAM and a few drives in RAID 5 and see how it goes.
 
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I've got no network connection from the box so can't post anything directly, nor do I have much in the way of Windows benchmarking software, however, Geekbench 2 gives an overall score of 3648 and Super Pi 1M completes in 38 seconds using my quad core Opteron 1352 @ 2.1 GHz.

For comparison, these are some Geekbench 2 scores from my old machines:

6515 = Core2Quad Q9550 @ 3.83 GHz
3648 = Quad Opteron 1352 @ 2.1 GHz
2040 = Quad Xeon 2.4 GHz @ 3.16 GHz
1888 = Athlon 64 3500+
1802 = Late 2005 PowerMac G5

3648 is not too shabby really, for £170!

Not that I was really expecting it, but just in case anyone was wondering, there are no settings in the BIOS to allow overclocking on the ML115. I'd be interested to hear how the ML110 compares - although I'll probably be gutted if it's dramatically quicker! :)
 
The 110 has a far slower transfer speed from disk to disk going by my test mule, I bought an ml 110 and a 115 around 8 months ago to compare for a project in work and the dual core (then it was the latest model) AMD box was quite a bit faster in pretty much every test I ran. The new gen quad cores are getting cheaper again too.
Fishfishfish, pull the 512mb out and throw 3 or 4 gb of non ecc ram in for cheapness and speed. the dual core 115s absolutely fly in xp with loads of ram.
 
Thanks, brendy. Yes, replacing the ram was the first thing on my to-do list, along with getting some more drives in there.

My disk transfer rates weren't too shabby - around 89mb/sec, if I recall correctly. Should be very zippy when they're in raid formation.
 
fishfishfish said:
I've got no network connection from the box so can't post anything directly, nor do I have much in the way of Windows benchmarking software, however, Geekbench 2 gives an overall score of 3648 and Super Pi 1M completes in 38 seconds using my quad core Opteron 1352 @ 2.1 GHz.

For comparison, these are some Geekbench 2 scores from my old machines:

6515 = Core2Quad Q9550 @ 3.83 GHz
3648 = Quad Opteron 1352 @ 2.1 GHz
2040 = Quad Xeon 2.4 GHz @ 3.16 GHz
1888 = Athlon 64 3500+
1802 = Late 2005 PowerMac G5

3648 is not too shabby really, for £170!

Not that I was really expecting it, but just in case anyone was wondering, there are no settings in the BIOS to allow overclocking on the ML115. I'd be interested to hear how the ML110 compares - although I'll probably be gutted if it's dramatically quicker! :)
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Glad you went for it in the then. :) The Dual Core version of the ML115 does have vCore and multi adjustments in the BIOS.
 
I wonder (hopefully) whether that's because you've got a more recent BIOS...

Have been messing around with FreeNAS on it this evening, with it installed directly to a Flash drive on the motherboard. Works really well.
 
fishfishfish said:
Nope, I've got the most recent BIOS. So it looks like only the dual core version of the Opteron-based ML115 allows overclocking.
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The only options are the unlocked multi and vCore adjustments, nothing to change RAM frequency, HT Link etc So your not missing much to be honest. :p

Did you install ESXi on the machine?
 
When it comes to overclocking these types of machines, With XP they are certainly fast and very reliable so I wouldnt bother trying, bios allowing or not. I do remember the dual cores allow adjustments as mentioned above but have yet to get in some of the newer generation of the g5 quad core models, wont be long though and cant wait to see how server 2008 runs on it.
 
Thanks, chaps!

I've just put 4GB of OCZ memory in it and it's flying now. ESXi had previously been complaining about the lack of RAM, as it needs 1GB to install. Unfortunately I hit a problem in which ESXi couldn't find the drive to install to (I was trying to install to USB key drive) but have just found this guide to installing it, included this link to show how to get around the problem by copying the ESXi install to the drive on a separate machine.

This should give me something to play with over Christmas! The next plan is to get a couple or three 1.5TB Seagate drives and have a play with it. I'm planning to install Debian/Ubuntu to replace my existing development web server, and FreeNAS to handle the NAS side of my network. Sound wise?

Very impressed with the machine so far. It's dead quiet too.
 
Glad its working :) I used the same guides to install ESXi on a flash drive.

Very quick to boot and gets the job done although I think the drive I used may be on its way out, its about 5 years old and has 2MB/s Read and 0.9KB/s Write :P
 
I'd kill to have some spair cash to get me one of these!
but as I've been reduced to 4 hours a day I can't see there being any IT budget left!
 
Long shot, but does anyone know approximately how much power these consume?
I'm thinking of getting one as a home file server to replace a dual PIII (which normally uses just under 100w), and would be interested to know how much more one of these would cost to run.
 
Swanster said:
Long shot, but does anyone know approximately how much power these consume?
I'm thinking of getting one as a home file server to replace a dual PIII (which normally uses just under 100w), and would be interested to know how much more one of these would cost to run.
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The Dual Core versions I have use roughly 90Watts idle and 120ish under load. A quick google shows the Quad Core version to idle around 88-99Watts and load upto 140 although the author mentioned that he wasn't sure of the load levels when he took the readings.

http://www.techhead.co.uk/installing-vmware-esx-and-esxi-35-on-an-hp-proliant-ml115-g5-quad-core
 
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Tuvoc said:
Thanks - interestingly 4GB of Crucial ECC RAM is the same price as that, so arguably you may as well go that route
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If its the same price then I would go for the ECC RAM to be honest.

I dare not ask how you found the Crucial ECC ram so cheap :o
 
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