IBM x3100 M4 mini server - what do you think?

[Bluecube]

Just seen this posted on HotUKDeals - http://www.serversplus.com/servers/t...ervers/2582kbg

This is the first time I've seen a miniserver that rivals the HP microserver. No cashback but you seem to be getting quite a lot for your money - hardware RAID and a management module for example.

Is anyone getting one?

[virtuo]

Dual NICs, 4GB RAM, 500Gb drive and a DVD ROM. Looks quite decent for the money (well the specs do, case is a bit ugly). I have no idea where that CPU sits in comparison to the competition, going to be lazy and assume it's competitive.

Shame there's no cashback, managed to get 2 N54Ls for about the same price.

[ChinesePate]

still won't beat the HP cashback offer

[kompukare]

I have no idea where that CPU sits in comparison to the competition, going to be lazy and assume it's competitive.

Well PassMark put the G870 at well over twice the speed of the N54L:
Intel Pentium G870 @ 3.10GHz 3121
AMD Turion II Neo N54L Dual-Core 1397

Intel and their strange market segmentation: i5 and i7 don't support EEC but i3, Pentium and even Celeron do!

Anyway, a lot bigger than a MicroServer but dual NIC and space for (I assume) full-size PCIe cards is handy.

[scaryjim]

I'm intrigued that they reckon a Sandy Bridge Pentium supports ECC memory - I was pretty sure that was one of the features Intel disabled on everything but the Xeons? I'll never understand Intel's random feature enabling/disabling scheme....

[herulach]

Performance wise it should beat a microserver into a cocked hat, but then anyone needing more performance probably already has better hardware.

I suspect the ECC memory is an error though - there is a xeon version available.

[kompukare]

Well, Intel don't seem to think so either:

http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced...ECCMemory=true

No G870 Pentium there. Maybe, IBM got a special version or there is something wrong somewhere. (Or IBM are supplying ECC memory and the processor just ignores it?)

Sort of hard to get info out of that database, but is a list of 22nm and 32nm parts which support EEC:
http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced...ECCMemory=true

No real pattern or sense to it though. I think Intel marketing throw dices when naming new products and semi-randomly disable stuff.

Oh, and unlike the old HP Microserver (but like the new G8 ones) this should only support ECC not regular (the AMD Neo CPUs would gladly mix RAM which was a bit unusual).

[shaithis]

No RDIMM support (Neither has the Microserver but this thing could be used for more demanding tasks)

But otherwise, a good choice over the Microserver, especially if you are after something with a bit more grunt and upgradability and expandability.

[dave87]

PC Pro review seems favourable:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/serve...ystem-x3100-m4

[Bonebreaker777]

PC Pro review seems favourable:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/reviews/serve...ystem-x3100-m4

You're right, but all the positive features seems to be more in favour of the professional segment instead of the home end user (least to me).
But if you can use such features, did seem to be very attractive. Excluding the fact that the reviewed server had a i3 with ECC support.