I've had a HP Microserver Gen7 which I bought used about 5 years ago and its served me well. I had Windows 10 on it and served as a media store, backups and for hosting Plex.
I have been wanting to replace it for a while now for a few reasons:
- The age of the machine itself, its low power but not the most efficient now
- It was quite noisy and is a bit of a pain to make the fan quieter due to it being a proprietary connection
- The WD Reds being 5 years old could start to have issues soon
- Its pretty sluggish even with 8GB of RAM in Windows 10 due to the CPU
- I wanted to relocate it from a cupboard space to free that up, into my tv cupboard as I have a spare shelf in it now
My main concern in having this in the living space is noise. However as its not a gaming machine and is really just a glorified file server, I thought this should be achievable. I also wanted to keep the cost down where possible. I looked at CPUs and thought the AMD Athlon 3000G was a good option, its only dual core (with HT) but is a 35w part. I managed to find a case that would fit in my tv cupboard that allowed for a micro ATX motherboard which opened up options and brought the price down by around £50-75 for that alone. In terms of storage, I wasn't fussed about keeping RAID and have deleted loads of crap on the server I didn't need and have the most important things in cloud backup so I went for a 1TB SATA SSD for noise and cost reasons.
Below is the old and new spec:
CPU: AMD Turion II Neo N54L (2.2GHz/2c/2t/25w/2MB) | AMD Athlon 3000G (3.5GHz/2c/4t/35w/4MB)
RAM: 8GB DDR3 | 8GB DDR4
HDD: 2 x 2TB WD Red & 1 x 120GB SSD | 1 x 1TB SSD
GFX: ATI 5450 PCI-E | Radeon Vega 3
Going by cpubenchmark.com, the Athlon is 2-3 times the performance with the same core count.
Onto the build...
Here is the pile of components, fresh from OcUK
Nice roomy case
Fits in with plenty of space
How the rear of the case looks
I found the stock lower end AMD heatsink & fan to be noisy so swapped it out with my spare Ryzen one. The fan is way bigger and it is noticeably quiet
Now installed with the Ryzen cooler. I still found this too loud, its a cheap fan I think, so bought a Noctua cooler. It quite a bit bigger and although the fan size is the same as before, its silent.
The PSU I ordered (500w) was meant to keep its fan off when under 50% load, which it should do all the time with this build and it didn't, so sent it back and instead went for a Pico PSU. I've not seen these before but it was ideal for the build. It just plugs into the normal 24pin ATX connector with a 4pin coming off it with a couple of SATA power adapters if needed. Its rated for 120W which is fine as the system is using 20w total from the power socket when idle in Windows and 63w total on full load test. Having a power brick means there is no fan and no noise. I've kept the brick outside the case to keep the heat away.
I found the southbridge heatsink on the motherboard was very hot to touch and there is little air flow in the case as it just has the one fan on the CPU. I ordered a silent Noctua 80mm fan and mounted it on the side, so its blowing over the memory, Pico PSU and southbridge.
How things are now - plenty of space.
And how it looks in the cabinet. Its a tight fit but is okay. I ended up blocking out the power LED (didn't bother connecting up the HDD LED). I went back into the BIOS a few times and upped the fan speeds so they are at a level where you can only hear them if there is no other noise and you're right in front of it.
Did a clean install of Windows 10, copied everything over and jobs a good 'un
Total cost just over £400 and then got some of that back from selling the old HP Gen 7. Forgot to mention I bought one of the Logitech wireless keyboard / trackpads for it as well but I generally just RDP to it to make changes etc.
Some stats on power at the wall and temperature during testing:
HP Microserver Windows idle 38w, 50c
HP Microserver max load 56w, 65c
HTPC Windows idle 20w (32c stock Athlon cooler 1200rpm, 31c Ryzen cooler 900rpm, 30c Noctua cooler 900rpm)
HTPC max load 63w (53c stock Athlon cooler 2500rpm, 50c Ryzen cooler 1500rpm, 48c Noctua cooler 1500rpm)
I hope you enjoyed the read
I have been wanting to replace it for a while now for a few reasons:
- The age of the machine itself, its low power but not the most efficient now
- It was quite noisy and is a bit of a pain to make the fan quieter due to it being a proprietary connection
- The WD Reds being 5 years old could start to have issues soon
- Its pretty sluggish even with 8GB of RAM in Windows 10 due to the CPU
- I wanted to relocate it from a cupboard space to free that up, into my tv cupboard as I have a spare shelf in it now
My main concern in having this in the living space is noise. However as its not a gaming machine and is really just a glorified file server, I thought this should be achievable. I also wanted to keep the cost down where possible. I looked at CPUs and thought the AMD Athlon 3000G was a good option, its only dual core (with HT) but is a 35w part. I managed to find a case that would fit in my tv cupboard that allowed for a micro ATX motherboard which opened up options and brought the price down by around £50-75 for that alone. In terms of storage, I wasn't fussed about keeping RAID and have deleted loads of crap on the server I didn't need and have the most important things in cloud backup so I went for a 1TB SATA SSD for noise and cost reasons.
Below is the old and new spec:
CPU: AMD Turion II Neo N54L (2.2GHz/2c/2t/25w/2MB) | AMD Athlon 3000G (3.5GHz/2c/4t/35w/4MB)
RAM: 8GB DDR3 | 8GB DDR4
HDD: 2 x 2TB WD Red & 1 x 120GB SSD | 1 x 1TB SSD
GFX: ATI 5450 PCI-E | Radeon Vega 3
Going by cpubenchmark.com, the Athlon is 2-3 times the performance with the same core count.
Onto the build...
Here is the pile of components, fresh from OcUK
Nice roomy case
Fits in with plenty of space
How the rear of the case looks
I found the stock lower end AMD heatsink & fan to be noisy so swapped it out with my spare Ryzen one. The fan is way bigger and it is noticeably quiet
Now installed with the Ryzen cooler. I still found this too loud, its a cheap fan I think, so bought a Noctua cooler. It quite a bit bigger and although the fan size is the same as before, its silent.
The PSU I ordered (500w) was meant to keep its fan off when under 50% load, which it should do all the time with this build and it didn't, so sent it back and instead went for a Pico PSU. I've not seen these before but it was ideal for the build. It just plugs into the normal 24pin ATX connector with a 4pin coming off it with a couple of SATA power adapters if needed. Its rated for 120W which is fine as the system is using 20w total from the power socket when idle in Windows and 63w total on full load test. Having a power brick means there is no fan and no noise. I've kept the brick outside the case to keep the heat away.
I found the southbridge heatsink on the motherboard was very hot to touch and there is little air flow in the case as it just has the one fan on the CPU. I ordered a silent Noctua 80mm fan and mounted it on the side, so its blowing over the memory, Pico PSU and southbridge.
How things are now - plenty of space.
And how it looks in the cabinet. Its a tight fit but is okay. I ended up blocking out the power LED (didn't bother connecting up the HDD LED). I went back into the BIOS a few times and upped the fan speeds so they are at a level where you can only hear them if there is no other noise and you're right in front of it.
Did a clean install of Windows 10, copied everything over and jobs a good 'un
Total cost just over £400 and then got some of that back from selling the old HP Gen 7. Forgot to mention I bought one of the Logitech wireless keyboard / trackpads for it as well but I generally just RDP to it to make changes etc.Some stats on power at the wall and temperature during testing:
HP Microserver Windows idle 38w, 50c
HP Microserver max load 56w, 65c
HTPC Windows idle 20w (32c stock Athlon cooler 1200rpm, 31c Ryzen cooler 900rpm, 30c Noctua cooler 900rpm)
HTPC max load 63w (53c stock Athlon cooler 2500rpm, 50c Ryzen cooler 1500rpm, 48c Noctua cooler 1500rpm)
I hope you enjoyed the read
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