cross-posted from: https://lemmy.cloudhub.social/post/28451

Hello, I’m looking for a good first server for a homelab.
I do already have an old Dell poweredge 1950 I got for £30 but it’s:

  • Loud
  • Draws 350W
  • Costs too much to run
  • Only has 2 HDD slots
  • DRAC card needs Internet explorer

I’m not too bothered by the noise because I can just move it, but the electricity cost is quite ridiculous for something less powerful than my PC in every way.
I live in the UK so electricity prices are a huge factor for this.

My Ideal specs are:

  • ~16 cores (total)
  • >= 128GB RAM
  • ~100W idle power draw
  • >= 4 3.5" HDD bays
  • Preferably HBA mode on RAID card
  • £100-200
  • 2U

Is this completely unreasonable? I have found servers that match this all except the 3.5" bays and 2U.
Initially I found a Dell server with 128GB of RAM and two 12 core CPUs for about £200 but I realised it only has 2.5" bays.
There is a nice R720 on ebay I am watching but it will probably skyrocket near the end of the bid. Also, it probably draws a lot of power.
Any suggestions? do I just need to raise my price?
Thanks

  • AnagrammadiCodeina@feddit.it
    3·
    1 year ago

    First you need to think what the final use is going to be. Because I feel like everyone here can do already a lot with a tenth of the power

    • thomasdouwes@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      You’re probably right. But it still needs a bit of power because I’m going to do satellite image processing with it, and that needs about 40GB of RAM for the process and a lot of CPU.
      I’m probably thinking server first usage seconds a bit too much here.