September 26, 20169 yr I was getting some SMART warnings on my old box a Core 2 Q6600 on G33 chipset. It ran unRAID 4.x (with vmware) just great with only some added/swapped disks over its lifetime. It had a chipset that doesn’t support vt-d so I didn’t want to move to unraid 6.x and update disks in that computer. It was time for a change… I'm casually looking and not really ready to buy yet when I see on newegg: Lenovo Thinkstation D30 on newegg, refurbished, for about $1050, refurbished. Included is: 2 x E5 2670 Xeon 64gb of RAM (Max 512 gb of RDIMM or 128gb of DDR3) 800gb Intel SSD A cheap x16 video card MB has: 10 SATA ports! Dual gigE nics Intel USB 2 and NEC USB 3 3 pci x16 slots (one of those x4 wired) 1 pci x4 slot Internal USB for unRAID boot Case has: 3 external 5.25 bays 5 internal 3.5" bays 1 external 3.5" bay (filled with cardreader) Official Lenovo link: http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/workstations/thinkstation/d-series/d30/ Anandtech review of a $10k+ setup: http://www.anandtech.com/show/6456/lenovo-thinkstation-d30-system-review-16-cores-and-32-threads-under-your-desk Another review with good pictures pictures: http://www.storagereview.com/lenovo_thinkstation_d30_review For $1200 after tax and shipping I’m willing to take the plunge for a 60+ lb beast of a computer that puts up an 18.5k passmark, gives me a 800gb ssd cache with plenty of ports, slots and bays out of the box and room to grow. From day 1 this box was a pleasure to use and any surprised encountered were usually good surprises. The case had Windows 7 product key sticker on the side AND a refurb Windows 7 product key. Both have worked so I got 2 legit windows 7 product keys (good surprise). I didn't realize I'd have an internal USB port for unraid (good surprise). Booting unRAID with various x16 video cards always worked. The on board usb and nics were always recognized with no extra work. More advanced VM focused work similarly worked well: GPU passthrough, NEC USB3 pass through, one of the gigE nics passed through (although I ended up just bonding them and using only vNICs in vms). In old unRAID box I had an x4 Supermicro 8 port controller card and moved it over no problem. I had a 3 5.25 bays => 4 hot swap 3.5 bays and moved it over. The 1 external 3.5 has a 2 x 2.5" hot swap stacker So in my configuration that's 9x 3.5" bays and 2x 2.5" bays. A word about noise: It’s a big heavy box that looks like a server and I expected it to be server loud. It isn’t. It’s louder than your average new desktop but in an office environment it’s totally appropriate and imperceptibly louder. Even in a home office under a desk (and if it was on a desk it’d collapse it) I’d think it’s really really ok. All of the fans Lenovo supplies rest on rubber support mounts and appear to be high quality. I added another 32gb of RAM to go 96gb because it was $50 so I did it. So for $1,300 or so plus cost of extra GPUs and storage disks I just can’t imagine doing any better I did considering the time spent on the build portion of this project (time on unRAID 6, playing with vms, migrating data, etc etc all take their time but build time was minimal). I’m not a rookie but if the thought of building your own computer is off-putting and prebuilt server or workstation machines with the capacity you may want in an unRAID box seem way too expensive a refurbished Thinkstation D30 is the way to go. Current configuration is in my sig:
September 27, 20169 yr Looks like overkill but then again we know there's no such thing What are you planning to do with all that memory? From what I can tell using multiple vm's is no longer really necessary due to Docker, for the usual tasks. I don't know how you found that deal, I see things like this - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA78Y3288215
September 27, 20169 yr Author re: ram Well its got 4 Windows VMs running full time on it (2 with passed GPUs as of now). I may add another for my occasional domain use if I don't have my main work laptop on me. Still, I realize its overkill, in particular on RAM. re: price I don't know how I got the deal either. The seller was The Server Store by Met International but I've looked and it appears they have no D30 left. One way was it came with an NVidia NVS 295 which is basically a 2D business desktop card. That works for me but not anybody who would run a game. Its so bad at 3D its crushed by old Intel IGP. I suspect the seller was running out their stock? When I look now I don't see any 800gb ssd. I do see E30 (smaller case, no usb 3) and D20 (big case, no usb 3). When I looked at other similarly priced workstations they usually didn't have the drive bays unless going way up in price. Hence the title.. I got lucky on this one for sure. Keep an eye on D30 price. Its a great box.
January 28, 20179 yr Author Still thrilled with this box: components and capacity. Prices are better on eBay than newegg for the same config through the same vendor: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lenovo-Thinkstation-D30-2x-Xeon-E5-2670-2-6GHz-8C-64GB-256GB-SSD-NVS300-Win10Pro-/162284723940?hash=item25c8ec5ee4:g:L0UAAOSwUKxYa~GX
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