Build Check - Repurposed old hardware

[majestik]

Hello All,

I'm looking to setup freenas with RAID/Z2 to support my home lab. This would include iSCSI to an ESXi box for playing around with and also suppport normal home media streaming and desktop back-ups, etc..

I've been looking old hardware and it seems for my use case, I don't need a lot of CPU horsepower, so I was considering purchasing an old enterprise server off of ebay like this one --

Case
SC826TQ-R800LPB
Motherboard
Supermicro X7DBN Motherboard
CPU
2x Intel Xeon L5420 Quad Core CPU
RAM
16GB ECC RAM
Hard Drives
WD Red 4G x 5 drives
RAID
AOC-SAT2-MV8 (with only 5 drives, might not use it)


at $350, it seems like a cost effective way to get a server with ECC and hot swapable bays -- I figure if I needed more power I could swap out the motherboard in the future

Is there anything I should be concerned about with this type of approach??

 

[cyberjock]

That server is a great buy, if you then throw away everything except the case.

Those FB-DIMMs use like 8w a piece. So that machine will draw huge amounts of power, throw off ALOT of heat, and will eat those savings you think you are going to get. In short, and we see this every week, you're better off buying current gen stuff than reusing those.

 

[majestik]

Those FB-DIMMs use like 8w a piece. So that machine will draw huge amounts of power, throw off ALOT of heat, and will eat those savings you think you are going to get. In short, and we see this every week, you're better off buying current gen stuff than reusing those.

A good point, I wasn't considering the power costs..... but at 8W @ 0.085KwH, that about $6/year, per stick.. so $50 in ram, plus the CPU isn't as efficent, still seems like I'd only be saving about $100 a year ... or I'm missing something in the calc?

 

[cyberjock]

Not sure.. but every time we've seen someone buy a used server and then compare my setup, my setup has always won. My old setup was far more efficient than the one you are looking at, and I *still* saw savings upgrading from a 2008 setup to an ivybridge. I'll break even next year too!

 

[Lordadmiral Drake]

FB-DIMMs use about 5W more than normal DDR2 DIMMs. Depending on how many RAM sticks you have in that machine, it can really add up over time (Got 2 DDR2 FB-DIMMs in mine myself, but any upgrade I will do in the future will kick those out anyway)