Upgrade my Gen8 or keep what I bought to upgrade it?

I have the base model Celeron Gen8 with 6gb RAM in it at the moment, I wanted to upgrade the CPU and the best bang for buck seemed to be the Xeon E3-1220v2 around £100 so I did a few ebay searches. Anyway on a whim in Morrisons car park while nursing a 2 year old's fingers that he decided to put in my rear vent window as it closed I put a bid in on a 1U rack server and won it.

All being well the following will be on route next week.

SuperMicro 813MTQ-R400CB Chassis
SuperMicro X9SCI-LN4F Motherboard
8gb DDR3 1600Mhz ECC
Intel Xeon E3-1220v2 Processor
LSI 9240-4i Raid Controller
2x Seagate 1tb barracuda HDD
Supermicro low profile heat sink
Supermicro low profile riser card
Quad gigabyte Ethernet ports
400W AC power supply w/ PFC Redundant power supply
Rack Rails.


I figure I can stick the new one out the way in the cupboard under the stairs with a bit of crafty wiring to get the UPS and network into the cupboard (solid walls all through the house :( )

Initial plans were to use the CPU, RAM & Raid card in the Gen8, throw in the Celeron and ram from the Gen8 and put it back on eBay to see how much I can get back on it but it seems this rack server may be more suited to start running some POE CCTV kit in the near future on top of being a file server and backup machine.


What would you do?

I'd upgrade the Microserver as planned and keep it;

- It's easy to work on.
- Quiet-ish, small and compact, meaning I can keep it somewhere relatively open and accessible
- Loads of community support
- Decent used parts availability

The CPU should be fine, since the i3-3240 (65W) is on the quickspecs for the HP, and the 1220V2 is "just" 4 watts higher, but watch for the loaded CPU temps - HP really wouldn't support it officially.

This guy measured 80C with an IR thermomenter on the CPU passive heatsink when it was under load: http://homeservershow.com/forums/ind...eon-e3-1220v2/

Also note that I think HP does two heatsinks: one for the 65W i3 (832667-001 apparently), and one for the standard lower wattage CPUs. You really must check either the heatsink P/N, and/or your own real-world temps under load before trusting the system.

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Originally Posted by smargh

The CPU should be fine, since the i3-3240 (65W) is on the quickspecs for the HP, and the 1220V2 is "just" 4 watts higher, but watch for the loaded CPU temps - HP really wouldn't support it officially.

This guy measured 80C with an IR thermomenter on the CPU passive heatsink when it was under load: http://homeservershow.com/forums/ind...eon-e3-1220v2/

Also note that I think HP does two heatsinks: one for the 65W i3 (832667-001 apparently), and one for the standard lower wattage CPUs. You really must check either the heatsink P/N, and/or your own real-world temps under load before trusting the system.

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I have the 45w heatsink but I will be adding a 40mm fan to get round it as it's been done before with success. Also the UK gen8 comes with the bigger 200w psu.

Sent from my SM-G920F

I'd probably stick with the Microserver unless you feel that >16GB RAM or a real RAID controller are beneficial to you.

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Originally Posted by shaithis

I'd probably stick with the Microserver unless you feel that >16GB RAM or a real RAID controller are beneficial to you.

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I am getting by fine with 6gb at the moment, I hope it's a single 8gb stick so I can go to 12 but no biggy. It uses the same UDIMM ram so I will take that and the raid controller as it does fit and work from what I have seen.

Seems the consensus is to stick with the gen8 so I will chuck everything in it and see how it does noise wise as I can live with it idle at 6% fan.
If it decides it needs to ramp the fan up a lot at idle plan B will be shoving it out the way in the cupboard under the stairs!

I've only got Gen7s and with them I find the HDDs produce the most noise (having an under-the-stair cupboard sounds ideal TBH!)......I have found some of the really low-end towers (T110's ML110's etc) to be tad quieter due to case designs but I have yet to hear a rack chassis that I would be happy running at home.

I had a G7 at my parents house once, in a storage area under their stairs. The vibration noise from four HDDs was very noticeable to them - I had to dampen it with a granite cutting board with four Sorbothane feet which worked a treat.

"Acoustic Isolation Pads" - basically a hemisphere. Note that they can seriously "stick" to some surfaces, so if you use them, be sure to put a tiny bit of a plastic bag or something underneath each foot to stop it "gluing" itself to the surface. I got mine from eBay, which was the cheapest source at the time.

Yeah I already have isolation feet on the Gen8, it sits on my UPS that sits on a base I made by wrapping carpet underlay round 2 floor tiles then wrapping that in carpet, works very very well.

If I did put the rack server in the cupboard it would be isolated as it has those jet speed 40x38mm fans in it, at least they are PWM so they may run at a reasonable speed!

I would like to get the Gen8 out the room as it is the loudest thing in the room at idle, the UPS has been modded with a quieter 24v fan on rubber mounts so that doesn't annoy me.

TBH if I do move it into the cupboard the UPS can follow it and I will run a UPS powered cable to the PC, the wife would love stuff removing from the dining room :)

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Originally Posted by GoNz0

I would like to get the Gen8 out the room as it is the loudest thing in the room at idle, the UPS has been modded with a quieter 24v fan on rubber mounts so that doesn't annoy me.

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I can barely hear my Gen 8 and it is sitting about a foot from my left leg. If you run it in AHCI SATA mode I believe the fan doesn't spin down after boot but, in RAID mode, mine is very quiet.

That 1220v2... 69 watts is a bit much for a microserver don't you think? Why not grab a T variant i5 instead? An i5 2500T produces 45W and is barely any different to the Xeon, and there's one on ebay for £80 right now.

There are 35W and 45W Ivy Bridge parts on there for under £100 too

I put a 35W i5-2390T in mine - only cost about £45-£50. It's a dual core with HT, it's clocked higher than the i3 options and it supports virtualisation (if you need it).

69w is fine as they now ship with 65w anyway and it has the bigger 200w PSU. To be fair the server sits at 6% fan but it is still louder than my modded UPS and the PC is watercooled and virtually silent.
The E3 1220 vs comes up about double the 2390T and will be better when it is running HD IP cameras as well.

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Originally Posted by GoNz0

69w is fine as they now ship with 65w anyway and it has the bigger 200w PSU. To be fair the server sits at 6% fan but it is still louder than my modded UPS and the PC is watercooled and virtually silent.
The E3 1220 vs comes up about double the 2390T and will be better when it is running HD IP cameras as well.

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Yeah, I know the Xeon outstrips the 2390t, but a four core i5 would be a better match, no?

Going to be encoding video as well rather than the laptop so I wanted a quick CPU :)

Think I will keep the supermicro setup as I like it more than the Gen8, better performance as I can use turbo mode and the raid cards better. Interestingly the 1220v2 only uses 39w max with turbo disabled. I tried a few apps and linpack thrashed it the most.
As for the noise, I left it in the cupboard and couldn't hear it unless I walked past the door with no ambient noise, can't hear it upstairs so all good!

Just got to do the new cable run :(