Old Servers

l3gendluk3 · October 1, 2014

It was mass waste day when I found two HP ProLiant DL360 G4's laying in the local industrial area. They have been stripped of RAM, PSU and HDD's, but both the processors are still there. I was wondering if it would be worth buying a set of ram and a new psu to play around with one of them. I live at home with my family so something along the lines of a dedicated server for games when friends come over or connecting it up to my phone line and using it to handle my Ethernet connections. What are the limits of this server?

Thanks,

Luke

Atlantisman · October 1, 2014

You could, but there are a few draw-backs:

Power draw will be high,

those units will be pretty loud

And they will kick off a decent amount of heat.

But it could be interesting for you, if you're interested in servers and hardware to play around with.

Master Valafar · October 1, 2014

Since you say you have a home (not a flat) you could potentially hide the server away, where it won't be audible. You'd have to run a power cable and an Ethernet cable when your setup is done.

My server is pretty loud, but even my roommate isn't bothered by it : me walking in the appartment makes more disturbing noise (probably because annoyance is more factor of variation in sound intensity or frequency rather than intensity/frequency itself).

I haven't noticed too much of a temperature change with the server running. If you hide it, you should be good (only the power draw would be bothersome).