Upgrading a tower server/testlab

[trekkie1701c]

So I have a Dell Poweredge T30 server that I'm looking to use at home to gain some experience on, so I want some versatility in the build so that it can do a multitude of different tasks well enough, even if it's not the best suited for any particular task.  At current it's in it's cheapest config, with Pentium G4400 and 4GB of DDR4 RAM; though I do have 4 1TB Consumer-grade drives in a RAID 5 at the moment.  My goal with it is ultimately to gain more experience than running a few virtual machines off of my laptop will give me, and do the virtualization better (I'm running in to serious issues where the machines will lock up due to a lack of available disk bandwidth).  Plus I like, never play games anymore and I need an excuse to buy new hardware.

 

For upgrades, I'm looking at the following:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel - Xeon E3-1245 V5 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($293.99 @ Amazon)
Memory: Kingston - 16GB (1 x 16GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory  ($214.24 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Memory: Kingston - 16GB (1 x 16GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory  ($214.24 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Memory: Kingston - 16GB (1 x 16GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory  ($214.24 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Memory: Kingston - 16GB (1 x 16GB) Registered DDR4-2133 Memory  ($214.24 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Storage: Western Digital - Black 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($197.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital - Black 512GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive  ($197.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate - Enterprise 6TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($208.55 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate - Enterprise 6TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($208.55 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate - Enterprise 6TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($208.55 @ Amazon)
Storage: Seagate - Enterprise 6TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($208.55 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GTX 1050 2GB SC GAMING Video Card  ($128.96 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair - CX (2017) 450W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($23.98 @ Newegg)
Other: SilverStone Technology M.2 PCIE Adapter  ($29.99)
Total: $2564.06
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-12-11 13:07 EST-0500

 

Some of my reasoning behind the parts:

 

For the CPU, I'd like a reasonably high pool of threads since I plan to do some (well, a lot) of virtualization.  I'd also like onboard graphics as those tend to be relatively stable, and on a system I'm going to play around with and break things on, some sort of failsafe so that I can just hook a monitor and keyboard in to it and fix what I broke is always going to be extremely useful.

 

I'm not tied down on the memory yet, given the insane memory prices.  I do want ECC memory since I plan to leave this running all the time, and I'd also like to get some experience with enterprise-level equipment.  I'd like 64gb of RAM - again, because of doing virtualization.  I'm not very likely to jump on it at these prices, but I'm willing to pick up a good deal if there is one.

 

The M.2 drives (and adapters) are for speed.  I intend them to be in a RAID 0 (though, backed up to the mechanical array), so I should hopefully be able to use them for anything that uses a lot of disk resources.

 

The 6TB Enterprise drives are a bit overkill, *but* I'd like some Enterprise drives, and for a capacity that I'd likely actually use I'd only be paying slightly less for a lot less capacity, unless I'm missing something.  I'm currently using about 1.5TB of the 3 TB I have available on my current system, so I'd need a little bit more - likely 2TB drives would work for me - But at just $50 more per drive, 6TB is really appealing.

 

The video card is because I'd like to experiment with GPU computation and CUDA.  2GB of RAM isn't a lot, but at $100, it seems like a nice sweet spot for an experimental card that I'm not expecting a lot out of.  I suppose I could go cheaper buying second-hand or a much, much older card (I looked back to the 600 series); but I don't think I'd save *that* much and I'd take a big hit on performance.

 

PSU:  I obviously will need a new one, as this build is clocking in a few watts over what the PSU Dell shipped could handle, and I'd prefer not to explode the server yet.