Server buy advice

[KennyX]

Hi LTT Members,

 

I decided to buy a server:

My budget: 350 USD

Server will be used for: pfsense, plex, pihole

OS that will run on it: Proxmox with containers for above services

I decided to go on Dell Poweredge R710 (Refurbished)

I found 2 servers in my country (Romania) from a local retailer with the following configuration:

First one:

• Price: 270USD

Config:

• CPU: 2 x Intel QUAD Core Xeon L5520 2.26GHz 4C/8T (2.48GHz Turbo, 8MB Cache)
• RAM: 32 GB DDR3 ECC (8 x 4GB)
• HDD: 6 x 146GB HDD SAS 15k
• RAID Controller: PERC 6i
• PSU: 870W
• Warranty: 24 Months

Second one:

• Price: 340USD

Config:

• CPU: 2 x Intel HEXA Core Xeon X5650 2.66GHz 6C/12T (3.06GHz Turbo, 12MB Cache)
• RAM: 32 GB DDR3 ECC (8 x 4GB)
• HDD: 2 x 1 TB HDD SATA (7.2k)
• RAID Controller: PERC 6i
• PSU: 870W
• Warranty: 24 Months

I have the following questions:

1: The above servers are refurbished with warranty, they are probably brought from the west of Europe, they are from 2010-2011 ie they have 9 years old, will they work well after 9 years or will they start to broke the components on them? I never bought refurbished and I don't know what to think about it.

2: I was thinking of buying the first 4c / 8t variant, considering what I will use, do you think that is enough for what I need?

3: What will be the power consumption for the above configurations?

4: What you think about Dell Poweredge R710 ?

5: Can I found a better deal with that budget maybe something newer ?

Any advice will be welcome

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id look at used desktops aswell, there much lower power if you don't need rackmount server hardware.

 

1. Yea they should for for a while longer, there built well, and bards are cheap too.

 

2. Should probably be fine here, and cpus are cheap too.

 

3. Probably about 120w idle, 200+ under load. The 56xx chips are a good amount mroe power efficent. And those 15k drives suck up power.

 

4. Good server. I have worked with a few of them. No major issues.

 

5. Look for used office desktops if you care about power. Also look at hp and supermicro

[Jarsky]

1. Generally the quality on the Dell R series is very good. I have Dell R610 & R710's that are still going strong just fine. Parts for them (except the motherboard) are cheap to get second hand if something does go anyway. 

2. Depends if you're going to be transcoding with Plex, then the hex-core one is better. The L series Xeon's are low power draw so much better for power consumption if you dont need the more powerful hex xeons. 

3. The above configurations arent what dictate the power draw (excel the L series are much lower power than the E & X series), but what you're using the server for and the amount of load it places on it. C1E & C6 power stats were part of this platform. 

4. If you have somewhere to put it out of the way as they can get noisy on load, then my pick of "cheap" servers

5. Not really for all the features you're getting. the E5 series platforms are typically about double the price. 

[Donut417]

4 hours ago, KennyX said:

Server will be used for: pfsense, plex, pihole

PFsesne:

What you need to run PFsense will depend on a few factors. Internet speed and what other things your trying to run. For example Deep Packet Inspection will cause heavy CPU usage. Its not something a normal person would run at home, but just saying. If your trying to run advanced configs with PFsense then it will require more CPU horse power. 

 

Plex:

Plex is kinda like PFsense. Its requirments are based on what your trying to do. If all your doing is streaming 480p or 1080p content then most machines can do that. Transcoding is what uses the power. But it also comes down to how many streams/Transcodes you need. Putting your content in a file format that your streaming devcies will understand will prevent transcoding. HOWEVER, if you pay for the Plex pass you also have access to Hardware transcoding. So that means if you also pop in a compatible GPU, you can off load transcoding to the GPU. I havent looked up where those CPU's stand. But my i5 3570K can do easily 3 streams. With two of them being transcodes. BUT im running mostly 480p and 720p content, with some 1080. 4K is a whole seperate thing, id head over to the Plex fourms and look at the 4K thread before jumping in to that pool. 

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, KennyX said:

will they work well after 9 years or will they start to broke the components on them? I never bought refurbished and I don't know what to think about it.

Things that fail are PSUs, RAID batteries and HDDs. PSUs not too common to fail but easy to find replacement if one does. For the RAID battery (BBU) you can just not use the hardware RAID feature at all and negate the issues entirely, which you'll be doing.

 

6 hours ago, KennyX said:

3: What will be the power consumption for the above configurations?

Average 200W continuous unless the OS of choice has better power management than ESXi, fairly likely but don't expect any less than 150W.

 

6 hours ago, KennyX said:

5: Can I found a better deal with that budget maybe something newer ?

Newer price jumps HARD, LGA1366 era may be cheap but LGA2011 is a large increase in price. Pity because by now they really shouldn't be.