Gottria Posted March 20, 2016 Share Posted March 20, 2016 Well my HP N40L took a crap on me, replaced the power supply last week and this week looks like the MB is dead. Just getting the red light, pulled everything of the board and swapped ram and still dead. Is it work it buy a new board? Found a board on ebay from a N54L for $145 with a 90 day warranty or should I just start fresh. I don't need a high powered unit, just used as a file server for now. Quote Link to comment
Chris Pollard Posted March 20, 2016 Share Posted March 20, 2016 Have a look at a new Microserver, they do them with cashback.... Looks like they are £140 with £55 cashback in the UK so $145 for a new board seems very expensive.... Quote Link to comment
Gottria Posted March 20, 2016 Author Share Posted March 20, 2016 Build one or buy one ready to go? Also might consider just getting a NAS like a qnap or drobo? Quote Link to comment
korith Posted March 20, 2016 Share Posted March 20, 2016 I've got a n54l and a n40l. Many times when I see a deal posted up, I start considering an upgrade, problem is once you start adding up all the parts you're well over the cost of the hp microserver. I suppose it really depends on your needs, if you need a cpu with more power, or need to fit in more drives it's probably worthwhile. Quote Link to comment
BobPhoenix Posted March 20, 2016 Share Posted March 20, 2016 Well my HP N40L took a crap on me, replaced the power supply last week and this week looks like the MB is dead. Just getting the red light, pulled everything of the board and swapped ram and still dead. Is it work it buy a new board? Found a board on ebay from a N54L for $145 with a 90 day warranty or should I just start fresh. I don't need a high powered unit, just used as a file server for now. There is a jumper on the board that causes the red light if it isn't present. The jumper is between the USB port ON the MB and the 4 pin plug (believe it is a PWM fan plug). So is the jumper present and is it on the 2 pins farthest into the case of the three? If so then it is something else and a replacement MB would probably be necessary. If it is missing then you might be able to resurrect the N40L by installing a new jumper. Quote Link to comment
Gottria Posted March 21, 2016 Author Share Posted March 21, 2016 Thanks Bob, checked the jumper it's still there in the correct position. Korith, just got this back up and running, installed 2 new Hitachi 2tb drives then the power supply went out, orgered a new one and it worked for 4 days then I noticed I couldn't log into it, rebooted and it never came back. I thinking at this point of just picking up a Synology or Qnap device and adding in the 2 new drives to it. Quote Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted March 21, 2016 Share Posted March 21, 2016 If you like the old Microserver form factor, consider an Asustor NAS. UnRAID runs fine on them, and they're very like the HP Microserver you have. They'll boot off the USB like any other PC (the Asustor NAS is just a PC that boots off an internal flash DOM). Quote Link to comment
ashman70 Posted March 21, 2016 Share Posted March 21, 2016 I considered doing this as well to replace an existing NAS that I had maxed out, but in the end decided to go with a DIY build using the Silverstone DS380 case simply because it can hold 8 drives and I needed the drive density. Quote Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted March 21, 2016 Share Posted March 21, 2016 DS380 is OK, but the drive cooling and PSU config are both areas of concern for me. I'm also not keen on the side fans. Quote Link to comment
ashman70 Posted March 21, 2016 Share Posted March 21, 2016 Totally agree with you re cooling, it remains to be seen for me how the cooling will work out once I close the case up and put it into production. Right now I am copying 13TB of data to it and I only have 5 drives in it, its sitting on my desk with the front door open and the side panels off, the drive temps are between 31 and 33 degrees celsius. I will be adding more drives in the near future, so we will see. For a solution where four drives simply won't cut it though, I am not sure there is a better case out there. Quote Link to comment
InlineRanger Posted March 22, 2016 Share Posted March 22, 2016 Thanks Bob, checked the jumper it's still there in the correct position. Korith, just got this back up and running, installed 2 new Hitachi 2tb drives then the power supply went out, orgered a new one and it worked for 4 days then I noticed I couldn't log into it, rebooted and it never came back. I thinking at this point of just picking up a Synology or Qnap device and adding in the 2 new drives to it. If you're only storing a few Terabytes of data, I'd buy a 2-bay NAS and two 8TB disks -- or wait awhile and buy two 10TB disks. Depending on your workload, you could even buy two 8TB external drives, hook one up to your router and periodically sync it's contents to the other drive kept in cold storage. Quote Link to comment
Gottria Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 Ranger, I think that is what I'm going to do. My total photo and music library is just shy of 500gb. I still take pics but not nearly as much as I use to, kids are getting older and don't play as much sports. My other idea, and the wife said I'm crazy but I though I would run it through here. Back in July of 03 I build an i7-4770 system with an Asus Z87-Deluxe mother board and 16gb of ram and a 480gb ssd, rock solid for the last 3 years. I also have an i7 Macbook Air 11" with 8gb of ram and a 256gb eSSD drive. My thoughts were to load the Asus board, CPU, and ram into a LIAN LI PC-Q25B case and add my drives from busted N40L. Then I can use my i7 Air as my primary computer with docking station to drive my 2 dell 24" displays. Most of the stuff I do now a days is email, surfing, some light photoshop work, lightroom activities, and I think the i7 in the Air can handle that all just fine. Throw the 480gb SSD in a case and use it with the Mac for extra storage. Now it does sound crazy. Quote Link to comment
Christol Posted July 5, 2022 Share Posted July 5, 2022 On 3/21/2016 at 10:55 AM, BobPhoenix said: On 3/21/2016 at 6:20 AM, Gottria said: Well my HP N40L took a crap on me, replaced the power supply last week and this week looks like the MB is dead. Just getting the red light, pulled everything of the board and swapped ram and still dead. Is it work it buy a new board? Found a board on ebay from a N54L for $145 with a 90 day warranty or should I just start fresh. I don't need a high powered unit, just used as a file server for now. There is a jumper on the board that causes the red light if it isn't present. The jumper is between the USB port ON the MB and the 4 pin plug (believe it is a PWM fan plug). So is the jumper present and is it on the 2 pins farthest into the case of the three? If so then it is something else and a replacement MB would probably be necessary. If it is missing then you might be able to resurrect the N40L by installing a new jumper. Thanks, 6 years later same problem, someone removed jumper. Great stuff 1 Quote Link to comment
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