kingmetal Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 Just looking for a quick sanity check before I pull the trigger on a base-trim ThinkServer TS140: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/servers/thinkserver/towers/ts140/ Haswell i3 i3-4130 4GB ECC (I will be upgrading this to 8GB immediately, possibly 16GB if necessary) 280W PSU The only thing that seems troublesome is the PSU, but considering the power draw of the i3 is low, it seems like it would be enough even if I crammed a bunch of HDDs in there. The machine is on Amazon for $225 right now and I think that's a pretty screaming deal for my needs. I will supply drives (a menagerie of 1TB, 2TB and 500GB drives I have lying around). The machine will be doing Crashplan duty for 4 or 5 clients (very light computer users) and will be a Plex Media Server and may stream to 2 or 3 endpoints at a time, but they will mostly be PCs so transcoding should be light. We actually don't have any HD endpoints in the house right now, but that might change (no more than 2 1080p streams simultaneously). I will also likely run Transmission on the server. Anything glaring I should know? I know the case isn't ideal, but I'm going for quick-and-dirty here and this seems to be a much better value than building a similarly spec'd system from scratch, plus I don't have to scrounge for parts. Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 From what I can see it supports 2 internal drives. I happen to like the ThinkServer 440 better. Or perhaps the HP ProLiant ML310e Gen8 v2 http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=37674.0 Quote Link to comment
kingmetal Posted January 30, 2015 Author Share Posted January 30, 2015 From what I can see it supports 2 internal drives. I happen to like the ThinkServer 440 better. Or perhaps the HP ProLiant ML310e Gen8 v2 http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=37674.0 Thanks for the reply! The machine has 3x 3.5" bays and two 5.25" bays, along with 5 SATA ports. Since I will be booting off a USB drive, I feel that 5 disks is sufficient for my needs (for now at least!). If I need additional SATA I suppose I could always add an eSATA card and buy an external cage. The price point is what is attractive to me about this machine. That Thinkserver 440 looks promising though, I may look at it. It's about $75 more expensive, but the processor is significantly more powerful and the whole server looks nicer. One of the reasons I liked the TS140 is the i3 is a fairly low power draw processor, how does the 440 fare in that department? EDIT: I did some research and the delta for typical power consumption seems to be around 20 watts: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E3-1225V3-vs-Intel-Core-i3-4130 It also appears that the fans in the TS440 are considerably louder than the TS140, which is a concern for me as this machine will be in a common area of my house. Any input on this? Quote Link to comment
WeeboTech Posted January 30, 2015 Share Posted January 30, 2015 EDIT: I did some research and the delta for typical power consumption seems to be around 20 watts: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-E3-1225V3-vs-Intel-Core-i3-4130 It also appears that the fans in the TS440 are considerably louder than the TS410, which is a concern for me as this machine will be in a common area of my house. Any input on this? You can always sell off or trade the processor with someone. You can adjust the bios to disable cores and/or hyperthreading. Limit the highest frequency or turboboost. Usually the bios has settings so you can limit how fast a processor is able to work, and/or turn off cores/hyperthreading. As far as volume of fans, I do not know. However many of us have found fans that work better for our systems. Then there are kits to help dampen noise. Really I would consider the side of expand-ability. $75 more vs an eSATA card and now an eSATA box, vs front removable bays that can be replaced easily. You can probably save money and complexity just by upgrading the drives to larger and larger spindles instead of going the eSATA route. The only reason to stay within the small form factor is if you know you will not go past it and are concerned for space/size/sound. In that respect, you might consider an HP GEN7 Micro server, new or used. Even the GEN8's with the celeron or pentiums may serve your purpose. These are small and quiet. I have 3 in my bedroom. The GEN7's were being blown out for $200 and it's smaller then a milk crate with 4 bays and a configurable 5th bay. http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=9435299&SRCCODE=WEBGOOPA&scid=scplp1928336&gclid=COujmeWfvMMCFWFp7Aodk2kAMA Don't get me wrong, the N54L with the correct ram will virtualize with ESX, just not at a high speed. Good enough for a few unix vm's and a windows XP vm. (maybe even two). I speak from experience here. <LOL> However, with the ThinkServer 440, if you decide one day to start virtualizing, and/or encoding, the XEON and good amount of ram will support it well. Quote Link to comment
kingmetal Posted January 30, 2015 Author Share Posted January 30, 2015 I REALLY like those little HP servers and was eyeing them before I stumbled onto the Lenovo offerings. From my research, the Turion in that server is not sufficient for my needs: Plex tends to need a passmark score that exceeds 2000 to do a single 1080p stream, or so the forums say. Comparing the two here: http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core-i3-4130-vs-AMD-Turion-II-Neo-N54L leads me to believe the Turion would fall down with more than one Plex stream - and for $25 more I'd rather not take the risk, although the form factor is PERFECT. I agree that running fewer, larger drives in the future as opposed to cramming more drives into the case is likely the direction I'd go - but once again, the TS140 is sufficient for my needs I think since I can easily fit 5 drives in it right away. Size is a factor, since I'm going to have to stare at this thing on a regular basis - but most importantly I'm worried about noise. The TS140 seems to have a very low noise profile (potentially due to inferior cooling). I think the TS440 is a better box and a much better value, I just think that for my specific needs the TS140 may do it for me. I REALLY appreciate the input and I will do some thinking on this over the weekend! If I can figure out a place in my house to keep the TS440 where noise won't be a major concern I will go that route, but the only places I can think of are closets and while I've run plenty of 'closet server farms' before in my day with great success it's a pretty bad idea! EDIT: went through and corrected the model numbers for my posts, coffee must not be working! Quote Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted February 20, 2015 Share Posted February 20, 2015 I have a TS140. The cooling is very quiet, and it works fine. It even keeps my Toshiba drives down in the mid-30s during a parity build, which is pretty good. They can take 5x 3.5" drives. There are only 5 SATA ports on the board, though. Quote Link to comment
kingmetal Posted February 20, 2015 Author Share Posted February 20, 2015 Yeah it does only have 5 ports on the board, which is kind of a bummer, but otherwise I like it a lot for the price. Assembled mine, but haven't gotten a chance to actually set up UnRAID. General question: I did some forum digging and it seems like SATA add-on cards are hit-and-miss unless you drop $70+ dollars on one. Are there any 'silver bullet' cards at a reasonable price that anyone can recommend to a Linux Newbie? Quote Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted February 20, 2015 Share Posted February 20, 2015 I have a shitty old Highpoint RocketRAID 2680SGL which works perfectly in the TS140. Quote Link to comment
kingmetal Posted February 20, 2015 Author Share Posted February 20, 2015 I have a shitty old Highpoint RocketRAID 2680SGL which works perfectly in the TS140. Those cards still go for $84-ish. Not the end of the world if it goes that way, but I'm surprised that nobody has found a low-cost card that works reliably. In a perfect world I'd be able to find 2 eSATA and 2 internal SATA ports for $30-$50 and call it a day. Quote Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 This works OK in the machine, but I didn't try it with unRAID. http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00BUC3NNS Quote Link to comment
nightanole Posted February 23, 2015 Share Posted February 23, 2015 The thinkserver TS410, TS140, and the thinkstation E32 workstations all have the same mobo and small platinum rated power supply. You are just paying for case size. You can use the mobo from any of theses with a normal atx powersupply using a $5 14 pin to 24 pin adapter. I just got in a thinkstation E32 mobo for $50, and popped in a 20th anniversary celeron and a antec powersupply. You can run any haswell pentium/celeron/i3 if you want low power. Be warned they can not be put into sleep mode. Quote Link to comment
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