(EDIT: should have posted to the Good Deals! thread ... sorry ... anyone know how to change this post?)
I just bought a used (off-lease) HP P4500 from a server refurbish place (http://www.deltaserverstore.com/contact-us.html) (they're in Toronto). Reasonable prices (I'm a customer and have no affiliation with them, this is just a recommendation). I'm REALLY happy with my new machine (note it's only been up now for 12 hours ATTOW).
(Remember to ask for a controller (Host Bus Adapter) that's in IT mode, not the usual RAID one)
Including taxes and shipping, approx $740 CDN. Would have picked it up if I was closer (I'm in Ottawa). I've now got ...
12 cores (24 threads)
64 GB ram (ddr3)
12 - 3.5 inch bays for SAS or SATA disks
VT-d supported Xeon CPUs (I'm planning on migrating my dedicated Plex server into it, so I can't say yet "for sure" it works or not)
And I just added a 500 GB NVME disk for VMs in an 16x slot. I've got two 8x slots left on a riser (1 for the controller and the other for an nVidia video card) for passthrough.
This one is LOUD though. Gotta build a shroud to mask the noise. WAY louder than the IBM M1 (below).
My old machine was (still is for a bit) ...
an IBM x3650 M1 with an LSI 9201-8i in IT mode
6x 4 TB 3.5 inch disks (the remaining two disks are in an external chassis connected via SAS to SATA cables
32 GB ddr2 ram
8 CPUs (not hyperthread)
This machine works OK, dockers are pretty responsive and Unix VMs too, but windows VM are a bit luggy (yes, that's a word).
Oh, and I did have to fiddle to find a USB key that would been seen at boot time. But it does work.
Oh yea, and on this older hardware, the boot time is like 5 minutes (it gets stuck at BZROOT (or something like that). The new machine boots very normally.
What I really want for Christmas is the Cisco server with 44 cores (88 threads). Pricier though. They have a bunch of servers for 2.5 disks (if you got a bunch sitting around). But that won't really help most of us with out collections of old SATA 3.5s.
Woo Hoo unRaid! For all your HomeLab needs!