Dell PowerEdge T20-9186 Tower Server

[Lovol2]

Hi folks. It's great. Installed a low profile gpu for hdmi out (the on board displayport does not output sound!) And running it as a media centre with kodi. It connects to my main server and plays everything over the network with no problems. I can confirm that it is quieter than the gen 8 microserver as I have one of them also. For the £100 I paid I can't fault it.

Fantastic.

I was hoping to put the media directly on the T20, and use Plex Home Theater app to save having to power my 'other' computer.

I'm aiming for instant on... well, I don't intend to turn it off so it should work well.

Have you looked at what infrared controller is best? I have harmony so was looking at the Flirc.com ones?
any thoughts?

[neonplanet40]

I have been using a generic how infrared controller I got on ebay on all 4 htpcs. It works great. It's a dark grey colour. I only paid about fiver from Hong Kong for it.

[Lovol2]

For those looking. The t20 plays a 17gig h264 1080p movie using about 8 to 9% CPU. This is just playing locally on plexnhome theater, so no transcoding.

The build quality is the best I've seen... I do buy cheap stuff though!

Disappointments so far, power cable only just reached the 2.5" bays, so ordered a splitter to extend.
My Panasonic TV refuses to display 1920*1080 via VGA... So ordered a display port to HDMI adapter.
Everything else is fantastic, love the HDD drive byy adapter things.

[ubermik]

A few things worthy of note about this machine

firstly even with the 3220 chip its FAST, with a mediocre Sandisk SSD plus it boots in around 7-9 seconds into windows 10 pro and will restart in not much over 10 seconds (which is good to know when using any MS operating system lol)

Anyone thinking about getting the 3220 version from retailers for the cash back should check with dell first. It was listed as a qualifying product on the last cash back offer but only the 1225 quad core xeon is listed for the new cash back offer even though many retailers are still claiming the lower model qualifies

Scan sell a decent DVD RW with BDROM reading for less than £30 quid for this

The PSU is a piddly 290watt with no 6 pin GPU adapter.

There are also molex to 6 pin adapter cables and I think sata power to 6 pin ones floating around, but if not a sata to molex > molex to 6 pin should be fine if each is well made with decent cables

Its also a non standard 8 pin motherboard power connector so you cant just swap the 290 watt piddly thing out for a decent one BUT.......

You can either get an 8 pin to 24 pin adapter and use a standard PSU or get a T1700 365watt 80pluss dell PSU that has a 6 pin and supports GPUs upto 130watts I think, maybe 150 cant remember

The more daring could get a 24 pin extension and a compatible 8 pin lead from wherever, and "roll your own", some of the pre made lead photos show clearly where they have got the power from on the 24 pin connector, but with a fully wired lead you can probably spread the power out more evenly from a multi rail PSU or even combine rails for higher output

You can get cards like the 760TI which doesn't need a 6 pin power lead, but personally I would be a bit wary about pulling even 60-75 watts through the motherboard of a machine that is clearly nobbled so it cant be upgraded much

I had really thought the PC industry had grown out of this proprietary nonsense to be honest.

But despite this the T20 is blazingly fast and even though its a LOT more expensive for this round of cash backs (I got my 3220 variant from ebuyer for £150 - £70 cash back now its over 200 for the same spec before the cash back) its still not a bad deal even if you HAVE to get the 1225 quad xeon version as that is bound to be MUCH faster and not that much over £200 after the rebate plus it comes with a 1tb drive rather than the 500 shipped in the 3220 version too

For anyone interested windows 10 pro recognises all of the hardware

A minor gripe other than the PSU, slimline DVD and the crappy plastic drive holders is that each time you swap a drive you have to go into the bios then exit it, otherwise the drive doesn't exist but that's a really minor thing once you know about it. But first time round its like "OMG, my brand new drive is a duffer" lol

Oh yeah, theres an extended onsite warranty available for £40 for these too that takes the warranty to 5 years if I recall correctly, absolute bargain even if you only keep it for 2 or 3 years

Just remembered something else, the stupid poxy cheap plastic drive carriers BE CAREFUL!!!!, the metal pins can be broken loose when bending them open to put a drive in and then fall out as its being reinserted into the drive

If you don't notice you could turn the machine on with a metal pin on the motherboard, the only bright side is that the 290watt PSU wouldn't make a very big explosion compared to a REAL powersupply lol, not that its MUCH of a consolation

But seriously, these are the cheapest crappiest tool free drive carriers I have seen, they could have made an all plastic one that would have worked just as well

Fairly sure that's it now

Back to scouring ebay for a cheap CPU and GPU upgrade for my 3220 version lol >>>>>>>>>>>>>

Cant think of anything else, so I hope some of that is of some use to someone

[Bonebreaker777]

If you wouldn't mind to report back of what did you managed to find in form of 'upgrades', please. Going for a 4C i5 or Xeon or rather for a 4C/8T?

[Peter Parker]

Thanks to this thread I just bought one of these for my office to use as a software build server. It sits under a desk compiling and testing software all day for us and is a wonderful machine. Who's a good server? You are! Yes you are.

I got the version with the Xeon E3-1225 v3 3.2GHz, added 2x8GB of Kingston DDR3 and a cheap 120GB SSD - total around £330 after an £80 rebate.

Plenty of CPU grunt there, and enough memory to run VMs for two databases, build server, build repository, build agents etc etc. I'm very happy that I didn't just get a NUC, which would have been physically a lot smaller but with a less powerful CPU.

In theory these CPUs work:
http://ark.intel.com/products/series...ct-Family#@All

So you could add this for Hyperthreading but it doubles the overall cost at about £267.99 + VAT
http://www.newegg.com/global/uk/Prod...82E16819117317