This is absolutely ridiculous. You don’t need a server anywhere near that powerful and that’s complete overkill. On top of that you shoved it in a closet. I love it man great job! 😂
An enterprise 18 core 192 gig server for Jellyfin. This is like getting a mac book to watch RUclips except he spent 1/3rd the price! Too bad that power bill is going to close the gap..
Mine’s absolutely ridiculous too! I have a Dell Poweredge R720 with 192GB of RAM and 16 1.2TB drives, dual 1100W power supplies…running TrueNAS. LOVE it!
@@supaman881 No, mine has the H710 and I had no issues with it in TrueNAS. In fact, I have 3 R720 and 1 R720X, all with the H710 and all with the TrueNAS, no issues on any of them.
DC Engineer here and also Dell PowerEdge hardware certified. R700 series are good machines, we have over 400 of them in the DC i work at. Personally for home i use a PowerEdge T110 tower server, beefed up with the best CPU's i could shove in it. Power consumption is sensible and best of all its Silent. I have it in a cupboard not far from our living room and cannot hear it. I used ESXi and virtualise everything Pfsense, NAS, UniFi server, Pi-Hole etc.
For that slot with the wrench icon on the front, it's a vFlash slot, which is basically a specially branded SD card. vFlash is basically just some storage that you can load CD images on, and your server can boot from it as if it was a real CD drive. It's not for authenticating with the BIOS. (However if you haven't changed the default password, out of the box you can plug in a USB drive with a config file and iDRAC will load a bunch of settings from it.) Last I checked vFlash were just Kingston cards with a special label, but generic cards won't work in the slot.
I believe that the R730 has a bios/idrac update that will update the virtual console to use HTML 5 instead of Java. For me this made getting the VC to work much more reliably.
I recently upgraded my 1u Baracuda AMD server to a 2u Dell Poweredge R815. Very similar to yours and picked up on eBay for £100 (US$125) proving there are some huge bargains to be had if you look for them. It came with 3 1TB drives, 256GB Ram and 4xAMD Opteron 6320 8 cores, 2.8GHz processors. Swapped out the 1TB drives for 6x1TB SSDs and it flys. Super heavy but powerful as hell. I haven't bothered with a GPU as mine is for hobbyist web development rather than media serving, I only have 6x2.5inch bays in mine anyhow so wouldn't have a great amount of media storage. Running ProxMox as I get on better with that than VSXi and spinning up a new VM anytime literally takes seconds. All in all, like yourself, total overkill, because I can! 😂😂Very happy with my new aquisition and I hope your Dell serves you well dude.
The R815 's are not a good buy. The motherboard on them dies for some reason. I had a whole bunch of them fail in the same manner at work. The R710's of the same vintage have all behaved flawlessly. IMHO, the Rx20 line is the minimum you want, as these are the ones where the iDRAC works in modern browsers without the need for Java. The R730 is a great option as you can add GPUs up to 250W (so even A100 40GB but not A100 80GB) very easily. All you need is the low-profile heatsinks, the supplementary power cables (they will need modifying for more recent GPUS like P100/V100/A100 though), and solid PCI slot covers for any unused PCI slots, along with the 1100W PSUs.
I have the dell R 510 and its great love it I have 12 bays in the front and 2 bays inside with video card and 2 pci-e cards with 4 4 T nvme ssd drives I would never trade it for anything thanks for sharing your server. Oh I paid $200 Canadian for it.
I'm still on an r330 and so wish I'd of went 630/740. Thanks for sharing - I'm still surprised at how well the 330 is performing but I hope to get my next upgrade.
"1U is loud" is only sort of true. Sure, if the system is running at 100% load, or you configure the fans to run 100% all the time, it sure is loud. But I have an R630 in my basement and if you couldn't see it you wouldn't know it was there. The fans sit at 20% 99% of the time which is pretty quiet, especially when you consider how loud other basement equipment is. Edit: Also for idrac, you don't have to use the java based console. If you click "Virtual Console" on the sidebar, you can launch (and configure as default) the HTML5 version.
Ive got one of these i run at home....you can take out the stock noisy fans and replace with Noctua PWM fans...mines runs near silent now even under full load (or as much load as i can put it under)
I agree, I can too! I have 2 Dell R720's to play with I got cheap from Ebay. I have built regular PC's, but have never played with enterprise gear. It's fun and with VM's, you can do a lot without having several PC's around. Yes, looks matter to me as well. I like the looks of the Dell servers. Nice video.
I have an R620 which is a 1U version of this, and it's been pretty great, it uses 2.5" drives though, but as 2.5" SSD drives have gotten cheaper, I'm just starting to fill it up with those...
I use a R730XD for my TrueNAS server running plex and its awesome. I have another R730 as my Proxmox host running things like docker, AMP for game servers, and some windows VMs. I use the Dell IPMI iDrac fan tool to quiet them. They are right next to me in my office and are no louder than say a gaming PCs fan noise while gaming.
I feel your pain about electric. My Poweredge idles at 300ish watts although 768 gigs of ram. Quite handy machines. 10/14tb drives 2 Tesla P4s, 4 ssds, 2 1.6TB Intel optane PCI/ 4 118gig nvme optane. 9400-16e HBA with 90 drives in six diskarrays hanging off the poweredge. Far as fan speed there is a dell-idrac-fan-controller in truecharts if you have something like TrueNAS scale. Just have to add the TrueCHarts catalog. TrueNAS Scale runs like a top. The fan app allows you to set fan speed low , has cpu temp threshold if it goes above that it will spin the fans up , cool her down then go back to the previous fan speed set. You can also Disable 3rd party PCIE Card Dell Default cooling Response. Easier than manually sending over CLI with a hex . Turning the cooling response logic off off ipmitool -I lanplus -H IPMI-IP -U root -P your-password raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x00 Then setting fan speed by ipmitool -I lanplus -H IPMI-IP -U root -P yourpassword raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x28 0x28 being the hexadecimal for 40 which represents 40% fan speed. With the app it sets fan speed on reboot rather than using a script.
I manage dell servers, the idrac is pretty good. I wish the host level cli was better. But with idrac8 web gui - if you go into configuration settings - you can change the default VNC from java to html5 if you dont want to leave the browser.
Great video ! And great job with the GPU power cables. Dell sucks at generating solutions for the high grade GPU powering and fan speed problems. The biggest issue I have encountered is the GPU power cables. There are a lot of cables around, but most of them are useless. I have a R730 with 2x2699V3, 304GB ram, 2TB NVMe PCIe SSD + 2TB SATA SSD, 2x1100W. And the fans are silent normally if you do not add a GPU. But with the GPU, I needed to lower down fan speed a bit. But recently I saw that there are liquid cooling options for dell r series as well.
Thanks for the comment! It took me a good two hours to make the cables due to my own rushing and making mistakes and not being sure of the exact pin-out, as I heard on some servers the pin out is that of a cpu 8 pin connector, and others a 8 pin PCI connector (this was what the r730 used) , but it was definitely do-able. I saw several options for a cable on eBay and Amazon, but I can't comment on the quality of them. Liquid cooling would be really cool to see on these - I'll have to explore that and see. What do you use your machine for? Those are very nice specs!
I presume most of the things that I will mention below are things you already knew. However, I had no server-grade machine experience before I bought the r730, and I learned a lot by reading people's comments. I believe your video will be a magnet for r730 users, and I wanted to leave some breadcrumbs for your future subscribers. We (my wife and I) use it for genetics/genomics/proteomics data analysis on Python and R kernels on Jupyter Notebooks. Hopefully, we will use it with DL/ML-based image segmentation and prediction model training if I can successfully install P100 16GB on the server. I'm still having problems with the power cable and waiting for a custom-made cable. I tried different cables sold on Amazon and eBay, which claimed to be for R730, but the more I ordered, the more I learned that most of them needed to be correctly configured. Not even mentioning that every time you plug one in, you risk burning something in the server or the GPU because of voltage issues. I use R730 full force without VM to get its total capacity on Linux. For people who would like to use this machine in analysis but wondering about the performance and who would ask why (some of them might say, "My Mac with Apple silicon can do a better job"): Most of the data-heavy analyses hit CPU or Ram units a lot, if not both, during the analysis pipeline. Simply because the packages in genomics/proteomics were generated by non-professionals (mostly with grad students' help) and are not optimized for daily use. So, even when working on parallel computing nodes, we have problems caused by using non-optimized packages. And this ends up in pipeline breaks due to access Ram use etc., after it first caps the Ram and then hits the swap. Solving these problems is highly problematic since you assume that the server is always perfectly configured and the problem is your code. But most of the time, you find an incompatibility problem in the environment you compute and try to solve it by sending emails to the server admins. The other option is using Azure, Colab, or AWS, but this time on one end, you don't know where that data goes, on the other end; if you'd like to complete a job that will take days, it starts to become a headache. And not every time your code works as expected, so you re-run and re-run again. On new, loaded Mac notebooks, Ram becomes an issue even if you have 64GB of it. On the other hand, Mac desktop computers are really expensive, and Apple has the habit of turning your money into ferry dust after 2-3 years if you invest in them. On the contrary, old server machines like R730 give you the whole control of the task, and you can log in and be able to trace the problems quickly. One step ahead of R720 with DDR3, R730 can use DDR4, and the Rams are dirt cheap on eBay these days. On the CPU level, even though each CPU core individually seems to be slow compared to the latest CPUs, when run in parallel, they form the mighty "Voltron" together to complete the workload. By the way, to protect the mental health of new R730 users who would like to add new GPUs, I'm adding a youtube link for how to design and generate a GPU-Riser PCIe 8pin cable for R730: ruclips.net/video/fvgw9sv8k9I/видео.html&ab_channel=ComputersCatsandMore And on this one, the same person checks the voltages of the Riser and shows how the cable pin configuration should be for R730: ruclips.net/video/1bInTHpoPSw/видео.html&ab_channel=ComputersCatsandMore The person in the video also sells cables, server parts, and machines on eBay and is very helpful and reachable. This is the person I ordered the 8-pin cable from, and I'll add an update on this topic in the upcoming days :). Most people use these machines for home-lab-based use, including mining, gaming VPN, email or web server, etc. Because these machines are a bit aged, new parts and solutions are a headache (such as NVMe boot and new GPUs). So, I presume people start moving to newer machines that would give them fewer problems to solve and more options for using newer parts(especially the miners). On the contrary, some parts and tech (such as 10gig ethernet cards or switches) that were so hard to reach budget-wise a couple of years ago are now dirt cheap on eBay for R series Dells. For the fan noise, here are my notes: R 730 works incredibly quite if you use Dell-branded parts(I'm excluding the GPU). Compared to the AC unit we use in the US, it generates less noise if you're not pushing it to compute on a vast data frame. The first time you add any new parts, in order to protect the board from the heat, it gets loud and settles down to be quiet (of course, if you did not add a GPU). But if you add a GPU, because the BIOS fan hex codes are old, once it senses that something is getting massive power out of the system, it starts jet engine mode and gets very noisy (every time I hear it, I curse Dell engineers and I hope they feel it in their bones). There are two ways to slow fans down: a) Let it run full diagnostics on the parts (find it on the lifecycle menu). This will take an hour or so. It checks every CPU core and Ram separately, including the video card. And it will go down from jet engine mode to ~4000rpm-ish, which is still loud. But you do not have to do anything; it takes care of itself if it gets hot. b) Use hex codes: These codes will temporarily override the reactive BIOS hex fan code running in the background. You cap the spinning to a level. *** REMEMBER TO CHECK THE TEMPERATURES IF THE GPU IS BUSY WITH SOME TASKS.*** Enable manual fan control: sudo ipmitool raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x00 Monitor temperature: sudo ipmitool sdr type temperature For example, to set the fan speed to 20%: sudo ipmitool raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x14 ** Now they should have slowed down ** Monitor fan speed: sudo ipmitool sdr type fan ALWAYS Monitor temperature if something is running in the background : sudo ipmitool sdr type temperature I will generate a temperature-sensitive script that will change the fan speed accordingly and add it to the Ubuntu startup as a service once I successfully run the P100 GPU I have. I do not want to deal with the BIOS hack; I will bypass this with a script. Note: I use a 3.1 Samsung Clover imaged USB hooked on the board USB hub to boot Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS Server running on PCIe Samsung 2TB NVMe SSD. The overall reboot time is ~3mins. Getting rid of Clover might only give back ~30 secs(27 sec to boot into Clover + 3 sec after Clover starts). Believe me; I tried a lot to get rid of it to boot the Ubuntu. It is not worth your time! Add whatever service you want to start to the startup and give it another minute; that's it. Notably, if your services are running, you will restart it rarely! The Dell boot manager checks everything and consumes most of the startup. And by getting rid of the Network check after the Ubuntu boot menu, I managed to get back 2 mins.
@@drcemdede Thanks for the reply and excellent write up - lots of informative and very cool information, much of which is new to me! You've done a lot of research and are very familiar with the machine! I'm hoping your power cables work out and hope the project continues to progress smoothly! To add, I'm fairly certain the snag you're having with the power cables is that the P100 has a EPS12V connector, which does not match the pin out of the riser cards. You'd likely need the riser card PCI-E 8 pin power cable and then a PCI-E to EPS12V adapter. Essentially hook this: (Dell P/N N08NH) up to your riser(s) and then hook this (NVIDIA P/N: 030-0571-000) to the other end, and then to the P100.
I totally get what you're saying. My Dell R720 runs almost desktop quiet. The Air conditioner in the room where my server rack is located is (which is also my office) is louder.
Just bought mine never had any enterprise grade equipment in the house. Wife might not be the happiest, but I'm geeking since I've been away from my job for sometime as a ws/vmware/rh server admin
I did this when I started out, picked up 2x HP DL380p 2Us, and then quickly realized I should start with consumer x86 hardware. Recently setup a Dell T7610 as my truenas core machine
That is very affordable option from what i seen. I just ordered one workstation t7820 with warranty, its with next scalable generation(1st one), but from the specs and options this gives you its very good option, and maybe would be even better for me too. I plan to use it as a server which workstations are not supposed to be, but still solid solution for continual operation i guess.
Honestly this thing is remarkably similar to my HPE DL380G9 Pretty much all the mechanisms work the same, sound is the same, expandability is the same. I run mine with an HPE Nvidia P100 tho and dual 500W PSUs in balanced mode. I tried running dual 1400W PSUs because the manual says it's mandatory for when you have a GPU in your Server and yeah... Turned my 140W idle to 165W idle... And as someone from Europe, that's not exactly nice. Fun tidbit tho: My 1U server is much quieter than my 2U server, but it's also only single socket and a newer generation of CPU (and I can fully control fan-speed on that one, unlike the HPE)
@@ComputersAndCoffeyProbably a geography thing. Here in Germany it's much easier to find HPE hardware than it is to find Dell hardware. My own DL380G9 is formerly from a German TV broadcaster. I've even seen an affordable DL380G10 on German ebay, but although every fiber of my being screams at me to buy it, I really don't need it 🥲
that duel socket 2011 makes my Kabylake NAS look like a potatoe and if the fans bug you Noctua does make hotswap fans of that size, they are a lot quieter then those but do offer the same or higher RPM depending on if those are 2000 or 2400 RPM fans.
I got a Dell R900 for $80 like 6 months ago (4 cpus, 128gb ram)! Its been such an experience learning on it! I would love to know more about the powering of the GPU and anything else as the only way I'm powering any pcie devices is I've added a desktop psu along side the server. If I could power it all internally that would be sooo much easier!
I just upgraded one of my servers in the datacenter, i switches from a Dell R620 to a R640, and i think the biggest upgrade is DDR4 RAM ;-). Plus it didnt even cost a lot more then a used R620 Great Video btw! :)
using an dell optiplex 7050 with i5 gen 6 and 32gb of ram, ran proxmox with truenas, ubuntu server, freepbx, and windows 7 for torrent station, my one and only home server :)
I followed your path and it's glorious. we now have so much redundancy in 3.5 inch disks while still only filling half of the slots One more advantage is that it supports SAS drives and you can get 16TB SAS drives for cheaper than SATA drives
Great video! I have a couple of r730 servers they are fantastic. Upgrade to a higher iDrac to use html5 and dump the java. Also since you have it in the closet without a monitor hooked up get a VGA dummy plug. Also know you can do ipmi commands to lower the fan speed it if is too loud!
@@SteveHartmanVideos Pretty sure you need iDRAC7 or higher which the 710 does not support. I run a dedicated VM virtualbox on my pc for just that purpose, on it I have all the tools for older equipment (servers, switches, ASA etc). I run java, have a flash browser and run Firefox ~49 or 52 ESR so that the browser will never autoupdate. I think i installed java 7u45. Good luck!
@@callmebigpapa that’s a great idea actually… maybe an old windows 7 PC runnning VMware Player for desktop. As for Java, i think you have to find an older version from 2022 since the newer updates do no work anymore when i tried it. I gave up after that. Thanks for the reply.
These are the type of shenanigans I prefer as well. My HPE DL380 Gen9 is crammed in a closet on 3D printed feet so the ears don't get borked. About to aquire almost 40 Dell and HPE servers so things are gonna get stupid quick...
I just bought an r630 and should've bought the xd version. Half length single slot gpu is a very narrow selection for transcoding and inference. Do yourself a favor and get a larger server so you can get better gpu for a self hosted media server and self hosted ai. The more vram, the better it is for inference.
r630 and r730 are pretty efficient but still too much power for most home server applications. i have a r630 at it highest configuration except for ram 1.6TB is enough 64gb modules are relative cheap but 128gb modules cost nearly 5 times more. i set mine in power efficient mod so it draws on idle only 60W but on performance mod 200W is idle power but the compute power stays the same the oly thing is the response time the r630 needs 2 second from 0% to 100% on performance mode he would do this in 0.5sek. so as for my private use case i can live with the 2sek. i run many services for me on this but also i host 5 game servers for me and my friends and there friends. one of my services is a ai image creator that will need 50% of the whole compute power and also i have 3 nvidia quadro t1000 in the back pcie slots also being used only for ai and video transcoding. mine uses up to 700W at peak but under normal load over the day it uses only 70W at peak. the r630 is really limited in internal space but it is more or less the same as the r730 but in a smaller case and it uses 2.5 drives instead of the cheaper 3.5 drives. so yea it is a nice machine also cheap used to buy you can get one 300€ to 600€ for the basic or more common configuration 800€ to 1300€ you can get the rarer top models like e5 2699v3 or V4 cpu or with a h730 mini raid controller or the 4 port sfp+ 10gb nic and such rare options. one quick note you can set over the idrac the fan min speed to 5% instead of the 30% is standard. 5% is enough airflow for idle also the system much quieter even the r630 was laud as a prebuild pc on idle. 100% is a whole other level of noise ^^' this scared me it the first start up ^^
Power edge systems are pretty sweet. I have a pair of R720s. Unfortunately I will have to retire them soon because, although they still work VERY well, they are VERY power hungry and not terribly efficient. Haswell (e5 v3) is getting long in the tooth ALSO, but you can pick up an 18 core top of the line V3 for about $40... so there is some value there. My custom 4U virtualization server is 2x 2699v3 (18core) and 5x GPUs has sort of replaced BOTH of my R720s in one go. I have been eyeballing R730s for how cheap they are, but I think it may be time to go to Epyc gen2 OR Skylake.
Sadly it has reached a point where picking up modern SFF or mini PCs is making more sense than EOL enterprise gear. Difference of idling 150-200 watts and 10-20 watts.
@@michaelmalenchek4575 It really depends on your use case. Highly efficient systems are great for basic services, but I can't run 5x virtualized cloud arcade rigs on 8-16 threads and a single GPU... At least not performant ones.
having it in the closet is not a big issue. I would get a 2x4 so that you are not resting that server on the rack ears, it can dork them up. or get a vertical mount 2u/4u rack and hang it on the wall.
You said "figured put a place to stick it"... where ? Any ideas ? Can on a balcony sit ? Even if in the summer is very hot and in the winter very cold ? And how many watts does it consume per month ?
Hahaha... this is overkill for what you wanted! Like buying an 18 wheeler to go get your mail. However, if you learn how to work with a server like this and gain a ton of knowledge from it then its not a waste of money. It's a good investment for knowledge.
The power efficiency is pretty decent for the overall cost of the hardware compared to more recent generations that are not quite at that “commodity” level imo. Thoughts?
I picked up a Dell R720XD on ebay for stupid cheap. Right now all I run on it is blue iris. Believe it or not, with only one service running its remarkably quiet. Because of space constraints my rack is in my office so all my gear HAS TO RUN QUIET. The air conditioner in my office is louder. Yes its a jet engine on cold boot but once it settles down its fine. I also had two 1100 watt power supplies delivered yesterday to replace the 750's it came with. A graphics card is coming soon. Your 730 is louder than my 720. I bet the graphics card is the cause. Dells are known to ramp up with graphics cards installed.
it is odd that these were selling in the USA for 400 dollars a year ago. the price never got that low in Germany. the r630 is 99 Euros barebone but then would need more 200 dollars to be prepped up
Hey man I appreciate the dry sarcastic humor, shit was funny, im the same way. "If you have problems like i do and have money " lmao yup I absolutely don't need this server and im buying it anyway haha
So, your monthly energy bill is maybe $15 a month? (I'm sure I didn't calculate it correctly) I really like the setup you have! I'm thinking this or, trying to find something that can be quiet / low wattage but run things like Prox Mox / Ubuntu or Windows. Great video!
Did you have any issues getting the Arc A750 working? They work way better with rebar enabled and I read somewhere that is possible on the R730 but not really straightforward.
the intel arc card is interesting but isn't its transcoding capabilities a bit reliant on resizable bar being turned on? I don't think the R730 has such an option in BIOS
It doesn't cost that much to run a server. My Dell poweredge r710 costs about 12 dollars a month. I put my kids minecraft realm on to it so I'm saving ten dollars there so in reality it's only costing me 2 dollars a month
i would go used like you but i cant it has to be whisper quite because i live in a 2 bedroom house and i have 2 brother liveing with me one in the back bedroom and one in the liveing room i have a firewall and 2 servers running with my 10 gb network switch and you cant hear anything and he sleep good new out will have a place for a server rack so it dont be in the liveing room but well its in the liveing room i also used it to place my sourround sound system on it as well so its like a 2 in one
i think all usb are 3.0 there are not color coded like on an consumer pc. the internal one is meant for your os or recovery drive. also i have one question why only dual channel? came it like that?
I'm running at about 232w with 2 E5-2690v3's. No GPU. I'm thinking of selling or going down to just 1 CPU. I was running about 126-148W without the 2nd CPU.
i just recently bought one of these systems. my nas just isn't up to the job of streaming my media. i set everything up perfectly and no streams came through. i think i needed a gpu for transcoding but its just a 4 bay asustor nas and i don't know how to do all that. My poweredge i put a gpu right in it and bam, transcoding done. it may be overkill for a homelab but who cares right...😂
I think they’re still worth it if you’re looking for and need a lot of expansion with pci cards and hard drives because I just don’t think you’ll find anything with this many pci lanes and hard drive slots for the cost. If you can get by with less storage and expansion, some of the mini pcs like the minisforums are very compelling, especially considering some of them have a decent amount of connectivity like oculink and similar cpu performance with much lower power consumption and a tiny footprint.
Enterprise gear is the most efficient use per watt... there's a reason why all the ps's are Platinum or titanium rated (Actual, not chinese slap-on sticker)
What is your opinion about servers like this? Me was "injected" that I shouldn't buy so servers because they need so much power and are big and they power/price isn't good? But no other mainboard has so many PCIe slots. And I want so many PCIe ports😊
my question is I got a deal on an r720 with originally 2.5 bays and the seller is saying its not going to work for my 3.5 drives. Any suggestions I've never touched these type of computers before so I dont know if im missing something obvious. In a normal computer its just a cable i plug it to a 2.5 or 3.5 no fuss but I'm not sure if dell's require an hdd bay . I dont mind frankesteining it a bit and just having mypair of hdd drives sitting there without being secure. Any recommendations?
Hi,.im interested in purchasing this server. I understand you are running proxmox and have 6 x 3.5" hds. Can you tell me how you have your storage setup? What raid configuration?
hey boss my old work gave me a free r640 and I got about 128 gb of memory and like a terabyte of storage and missing one fan, lmfao. at least I got both batteries and besides just loading random ass VM's on it using eSXI 7.0 i have nothing else to do with it
@@mosasa1307 that’s a hell of a machine - must have a pretty cool boss lol! I don’t know what I’d do with a machine like that honestly. My r730 is barely breaking sweat most days
@@skyluetz I do actually. I threw a 4090 in the server. The performance was underwhelming due to lowish single core performance. I wouldn’t personally recommend it.
It can transcode several 1080p streams, I haven’t done many 4k streams, but it will do those fine as well. Quality is great! If I were building a media server, one of the new intel processors that has an iGPU would be a good option for what I spent on the graphics card and machine as the iGPUs support AV1
See I agree and disagree. I have an R730, but i have the more common 2.5in SAS drive configuration, and i have several reasons why i dont end up using it anymore. Primarily, just... Too much power. If i could retrofit it with the 3.5in hard drive bays, i would consider moving everything onto the R730 and just call it a day, but because it has the 2.5in bays im stuck using it basically as a hypervisor with no storage. Also mine has a bug with c states and so it doesnt benefit from the power savings features that you get from that, and it idles at over 150watts... I dunno.
You are going to want a second server. How else are you going to organize backups otherwise? Don't wait for your single server to fail and realize you are no longer able to access those snapshots 😢
If I ever got this thing my parent would kill me. also PS. you don't need java to use the console, iDRAC8 have HTML5 console you just have to turn it on
that vga slot is 8x, while the other is 16x, plus intel arc are not 100% perfect with this r730. get a rtx 30 or rtx 40 series and ull be better in stability. i tried the arc 770 and pc crash when installing chipset or inteldrivers very often, plus this card got low performance.
Machine primarily does transcoding so slot speed hasn’t been a huge factor. Has been rock solid with stability for months now as well with the Linux drivers. In fact, I’ve had the Arc, a 7900xtx, and now a 4090 in my main machine, and I’ve actually had the most driver and stability issues with the 4090 surprisingly.
I got my self Lenovo TS440 5U Haswell server a year ago, kited it out in long run for same price I can get R730 2.5inch version with dual cpus for a fricking jellyfin and linux torrent storage. I'm scrub from Europ living in modest apartment and why do I need this so much whyyyyyyy. My wife will take my balls dude...
I built my own VMware ESXi Hypervisor server out of normal PC hardware that only idles at 55Watts of electricity. My ESXi box put these over kill enterprise servers shame. I'm running a total of 14 Virtual Machines on mine box with RHEL8, RHEL9, Ubuntu, Windows Server, UNIX FreeBSD, pfsense, Ansible....
@@eman0828 55 W is acceptable, especially if you use it as a switch (ovSwitch), router (Vyos, pfsence) it is already about -20W of the hardware devices.
@@user-0xDEEDBEEF Yeah my unmanaged 24 port Cisco Switch uses about 17 Watts. I also built a TrueNAS server out of standard Desktop hardware with an ATX board. That thing only idles at 35Watts. I use to own two 1U Dell PowerEdge servers back in the day. Will never go back to thoses. They aren't needed for homelabs. Most data centers build their own white box servers esp goo gle, fb , like what I just did.
9 месяцев назад
If you move to a colder climate you would need to upgrade your server farm to stay warm. Don't listen to those central heating losers. BTW, Nvidia P40s are pretty cheap and you can use them for transcoding, Stable diffusion, AI and ML.
Yes, I agree .... "Buy it and figure out the solution later"😎
Toys for us men lol. The figuring out part is either the fun or headache or money pit 🤣
Lollolol @@SuperMBARutgers2013
It’s better that way. Otherwise someone might present you with a blocker before you can force the entire household to commit. 😉
I still run one of these at work for 2nd backup off site, 10 years now running 24/7 with only drives and power supply failing, zero data loss.
This is absolutely ridiculous. You don’t need a server anywhere near that powerful and that’s complete overkill. On top of that you shoved it in a closet. I love it man great job! 😂
An enterprise 18 core 192 gig server for Jellyfin. This is like getting a mac book to watch RUclips except he spent 1/3rd the price! Too bad that power bill is going to close the gap..
Mine’s absolutely ridiculous too! I have a Dell Poweredge R720 with 192GB of RAM and 16 1.2TB drives, dual 1100W power supplies…running TrueNAS. LOVE it!
😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮❤e😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮
@@Hatch3dLabs Hello, does your use the Perc H730? If so then do you have any issues in Trunas? Thank you in advance.
@@supaman881 No, mine has the H710 and I had no issues with it in TrueNAS. In fact, I have 3 R720 and 1 R720X, all with the H710 and all with the TrueNAS, no issues on any of them.
DC Engineer here and also Dell PowerEdge hardware certified. R700 series are good machines, we have over 400 of them in the DC i work at. Personally for home i use a PowerEdge T110 tower server, beefed up with the best CPU's i could shove in it. Power consumption is sensible and best of all its Silent. I have it in a cupboard not far from our living room and cannot hear it. I used ESXi and virtualise everything Pfsense, NAS, UniFi server, Pi-Hole etc.
Can you make a video on how you virtualise everything?
I had a t410 , and a t440 , the 440 have better energy management and low noise.
Can you please confirm. Can we setup vmware esxi labs on poweredge t110?
@@UK_US007 Yes. I use Dell customised ESXi on my T110
@@UK_US007 yes I can confirm, essentially its a server thats just a beef cake, rather a 1 or 2U it looks like a desktop
Love it, took the same totally unreasonable route. Running a Dell R510 and Dell R720 around the clock.
For that slot with the wrench icon on the front, it's a vFlash slot, which is basically a specially branded SD card. vFlash is basically just some storage that you can load CD images on, and your server can boot from it as if it was a real CD drive. It's not for authenticating with the BIOS. (However if you haven't changed the default password, out of the box you can plug in a USB drive with a config file and iDRAC will load a bunch of settings from it.)
Last I checked vFlash were just Kingston cards with a special label, but generic cards won't work in the slot.
I believe that the R730 has a bios/idrac update that will update the virtual console to use HTML 5 instead of Java. For me this made getting the VC to work much more reliably.
You are correct!
I recently upgraded my 1u Baracuda AMD server to a 2u Dell Poweredge R815. Very similar to yours and picked up on eBay for £100 (US$125) proving there are some huge bargains to be had if you look for them. It came with 3 1TB drives, 256GB Ram and 4xAMD Opteron 6320 8 cores, 2.8GHz processors. Swapped out the 1TB drives for 6x1TB SSDs and it flys. Super heavy but powerful as hell. I haven't bothered with a GPU as mine is for hobbyist web development rather than media serving, I only have 6x2.5inch bays in mine anyhow so wouldn't have a great amount of media storage. Running ProxMox as I get on better with that than VSXi and spinning up a new VM anytime literally takes seconds. All in all, like yourself, total overkill, because I can! 😂😂Very happy with my new aquisition and I hope your Dell serves you well dude.
Holy shit that price!! Great setup man!
those cpu's are really not efficient tho
IMO Opteron is WAYYY too old these days. For bargain hunters I think Xeon E5 v3/4 is the sweet spot these days.
The R815 's are not a good buy. The motherboard on them dies for some reason. I had a whole bunch of them fail in the same manner at work. The R710's of the same vintage have all behaved flawlessly. IMHO, the Rx20 line is the minimum you want, as these are the ones where the iDRAC works in modern browsers without the need for Java. The R730 is a great option as you can add GPUs up to 250W (so even A100 40GB but not A100 80GB) very easily. All you need is the low-profile heatsinks, the supplementary power cables (they will need modifying for more recent GPUS like P100/V100/A100 though), and solid PCI slot covers for any unused PCI slots, along with the 1100W PSUs.
I have the dell R 510 and its great love it I have 12 bays in the front and 2 bays inside with video card and 2 pci-e cards with 4 4 T nvme ssd drives I would never trade it for anything thanks for sharing your server. Oh I paid $200 Canadian for it.
Reminds me of exactly how I felt when I got my first poweredge server. It's a super fun hobby, and that's a great way to start.
I'm still on an r330 and so wish I'd of went 630/740. Thanks for sharing - I'm still surprised at how well the 330 is performing but I hope to get my next upgrade.
"1U is loud" is only sort of true. Sure, if the system is running at 100% load, or you configure the fans to run 100% all the time, it sure is loud. But I have an R630 in my basement and if you couldn't see it you wouldn't know it was there. The fans sit at 20% 99% of the time which is pretty quiet, especially when you consider how loud other basement equipment is.
Edit: Also for idrac, you don't have to use the java based console. If you click "Virtual Console" on the sidebar, you can launch (and configure as default) the HTML5 version.
Dude you're hilarious talking to yourself. You should definitely make more videos.
1 Server turns into 3 and so on, I am currently on my 4th R720 in my rack :D Couldn't be happier with them
Ive got one of these i run at home....you can take out the stock noisy fans and replace with Noctua PWM fans...mines runs near silent now even under full load (or as much load as i can put it under)
I have been thinking about that, you think it's quiet enough to be in a bedroom though? At idle, doing nothing
@@kavmw this is just my opinion but yes as long as the fans have changed to noctuas....
I agree, I can too! I have 2 Dell R720's to play with I got cheap from Ebay. I have built regular PC's, but have never played with enterprise gear. It's fun and with VM's, you can do a lot without having several PC's around. Yes, looks matter to me as well. I like the looks of the Dell servers. Nice video.
I have an R620 which is a 1U version of this, and it's been pretty great, it uses 2.5" drives though, but as 2.5" SSD drives have gotten cheaper, I'm just starting to fill it up with those...
I use a R730XD for my TrueNAS server running plex and its awesome. I have another R730 as my Proxmox host running things like docker, AMP for game servers, and some windows VMs. I use the Dell IPMI iDrac fan tool to quiet them. They are right next to me in my office and are no louder than say a gaming PCs fan noise while gaming.
I feel your pain about electric. My Poweredge idles at 300ish watts although 768 gigs of ram. Quite handy machines. 10/14tb drives 2 Tesla P4s, 4 ssds, 2 1.6TB Intel optane PCI/ 4 118gig nvme optane. 9400-16e HBA with 90 drives in six diskarrays hanging off the poweredge. Far as fan speed there is a dell-idrac-fan-controller in truecharts if you have something like TrueNAS scale. Just have to add the TrueCHarts catalog. TrueNAS Scale runs like a top. The fan app allows you to set fan speed low , has cpu temp threshold if it goes above that it will spin the fans up , cool her down then go back to the previous fan speed set. You can also Disable 3rd party PCIE Card Dell Default cooling Response. Easier than manually sending over CLI with a hex . Turning the cooling response logic off off ipmitool -I lanplus -H IPMI-IP -U root -P your-password raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x00 Then setting fan speed by ipmitool -I lanplus -H IPMI-IP -U root -P yourpassword raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x28 0x28 being the hexadecimal for 40 which represents 40% fan speed. With the app it sets fan speed on reboot rather than using a script.
I manage dell servers, the idrac is pretty good. I wish the host level cli was better.
But with idrac8 web gui - if you go into configuration settings - you can change the default VNC from java to html5 if you dont want to leave the browser.
Great video ! And great job with the GPU power cables.
Dell sucks at generating solutions for the high grade GPU powering and fan speed problems.
The biggest issue I have encountered is the GPU power cables. There are a lot of cables around, but most of them are useless.
I have a R730 with 2x2699V3, 304GB ram, 2TB NVMe PCIe SSD + 2TB SATA SSD, 2x1100W. And the fans are silent normally if you do not add a GPU. But with the GPU, I needed to lower down fan speed a bit. But recently I saw that there are liquid cooling options for dell r series as well.
Thanks for the comment! It took me a good two hours to make the cables due to my own rushing and making mistakes and not being sure of the exact pin-out, as I heard on some servers the pin out is that of a cpu 8 pin connector, and others a 8 pin PCI connector (this was what the r730 used) , but it was definitely do-able. I saw several options for a cable on eBay and Amazon, but I can't comment on the quality of them.
Liquid cooling would be really cool to see on these - I'll have to explore that and see.
What do you use your machine for? Those are very nice specs!
I presume most of the things that I will mention below are things you already knew. However, I had no server-grade machine experience before I bought the r730, and I learned a lot by reading people's comments. I believe your video will be a magnet for r730 users, and I wanted to leave some breadcrumbs for your future subscribers.
We (my wife and I) use it for genetics/genomics/proteomics data analysis on Python and R kernels on Jupyter Notebooks. Hopefully, we will use it with DL/ML-based image segmentation and prediction model training if I can successfully install P100 16GB on the server. I'm still having problems with the power cable and waiting for a custom-made cable. I tried different cables sold on Amazon and eBay, which claimed to be for R730, but the more I ordered, the more I learned that most of them needed to be correctly configured. Not even mentioning that every time you plug one in, you risk burning something in the server or the GPU because of voltage issues.
I use R730 full force without VM to get its total capacity on Linux. For people who would like to use this machine in analysis but wondering about the performance and who would ask why (some of them might say, "My Mac with Apple silicon can do a better job"):
Most of the data-heavy analyses hit CPU or Ram units a lot, if not both, during the analysis pipeline. Simply because the packages in genomics/proteomics were generated by non-professionals (mostly with grad students' help) and are not optimized for daily use. So, even when working on parallel computing nodes, we have problems caused by using non-optimized packages. And this ends up in pipeline breaks due to access Ram use etc., after it first caps the Ram and then hits the swap. Solving these problems is highly problematic since you assume that the server is always perfectly configured and the problem is your code. But most of the time, you find an incompatibility problem in the environment you compute and try to solve it by sending emails to the server admins. The other option is using Azure, Colab, or AWS, but this time on one end, you don't know where that data goes, on the other end; if you'd like to complete a job that will take days, it starts to become a headache. And not every time your code works as expected, so you re-run and re-run again. On new, loaded Mac notebooks, Ram becomes an issue even if you have 64GB of it. On the other hand, Mac desktop computers are really expensive, and Apple has the habit of turning your money into ferry dust after 2-3 years if you invest in them. On the contrary, old server machines like R730 give you the whole control of the task, and you can log in and be able to trace the problems quickly. One step ahead of R720 with DDR3, R730 can use DDR4, and the Rams are dirt cheap on eBay these days. On the CPU level, even though each CPU core individually seems to be slow compared to the latest CPUs, when run in parallel, they form the mighty "Voltron" together to complete the workload.
By the way, to protect the mental health of new R730 users who would like to add new GPUs, I'm adding a youtube link for how to design and generate a GPU-Riser PCIe 8pin cable for R730:
ruclips.net/video/fvgw9sv8k9I/видео.html&ab_channel=ComputersCatsandMore
And on this one, the same person checks the voltages of the Riser and shows how the cable pin configuration should be for R730:
ruclips.net/video/1bInTHpoPSw/видео.html&ab_channel=ComputersCatsandMore
The person in the video also sells cables, server parts, and machines on eBay and is very helpful and reachable. This is the person I ordered the 8-pin cable from, and I'll add an update on this topic in the upcoming days :).
Most people use these machines for home-lab-based use, including mining, gaming VPN, email or web server, etc. Because these machines are a bit aged, new parts and solutions are a headache (such as NVMe boot and new GPUs). So, I presume people start moving to newer machines that would give them fewer problems to solve and more options for using newer parts(especially the miners). On the contrary, some parts and tech (such as 10gig ethernet cards or switches) that were so hard to reach budget-wise a couple of years ago are now dirt cheap on eBay for R series Dells.
For the fan noise, here are my notes:
R 730 works incredibly quite if you use Dell-branded parts(I'm excluding the GPU). Compared to the AC unit we use in the US, it generates less noise if you're not pushing it to compute on a vast data frame.
The first time you add any new parts, in order to protect the board from the heat, it gets loud and settles down to be quiet (of course, if you did not add a GPU).
But if you add a GPU, because the BIOS fan hex codes are old, once it senses that something is getting massive power out of the system, it starts jet engine mode and gets very noisy (every time I hear it, I curse Dell engineers and I hope they feel it in their bones).
There are two ways to slow fans down:
a) Let it run full diagnostics on the parts (find it on the lifecycle menu). This will take an hour or so. It checks every CPU core and Ram separately, including the video card. And it will go down from jet engine mode to ~4000rpm-ish, which is still loud. But you do not have to do anything; it takes care of itself if it gets hot.
b) Use hex codes:
These codes will temporarily override the reactive BIOS hex fan code running in the background. You cap the spinning to a level. *** REMEMBER TO CHECK THE TEMPERATURES IF THE GPU IS BUSY WITH SOME TASKS.***
Enable manual fan control:
sudo ipmitool raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x00
Monitor temperature:
sudo ipmitool sdr type temperature
For example, to set the fan speed to 20%:
sudo ipmitool raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x14
** Now they should have slowed down **
Monitor fan speed:
sudo ipmitool sdr type fan
ALWAYS Monitor temperature if something is running in the background :
sudo ipmitool sdr type temperature
I will generate a temperature-sensitive script that will change the fan speed accordingly and add it to the Ubuntu startup as a service once I successfully run the P100 GPU I have. I do not want to deal with the BIOS hack; I will bypass this with a script.
Note: I use a 3.1 Samsung Clover imaged USB hooked on the board USB hub to boot Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS Server running on PCIe Samsung 2TB NVMe SSD. The overall reboot time is ~3mins. Getting rid of Clover might only give back ~30 secs(27 sec to boot into Clover + 3 sec after Clover starts). Believe me; I tried a lot to get rid of it to boot the Ubuntu. It is not worth your time! Add whatever service you want to start to the startup and give it another minute; that's it. Notably, if your services are running, you will restart it rarely! The Dell boot manager checks everything and consumes most of the startup. And by getting rid of the Network check after the Ubuntu boot menu, I managed to get back 2 mins.
@@drcemdede Thanks for the reply and excellent write up - lots of informative and very cool information, much of which is new to me! You've done a lot of research and are very familiar with the machine! I'm hoping your power cables work out and hope the project continues to progress smoothly!
To add, I'm fairly certain the snag you're having with the power cables is that the P100 has a EPS12V connector, which does not match the pin out of the riser cards. You'd likely need the riser card PCI-E 8 pin power cable and then a PCI-E to EPS12V adapter. Essentially hook this: (Dell P/N N08NH) up to your riser(s) and then hook this (NVIDIA P/N: 030-0571-000) to the other end, and then to the P100.
I totally get what you're saying. My Dell R720 runs almost desktop quiet. The Air conditioner in the room where my server rack is located is (which is also my office) is louder.
See the link i posted above. It fixed my fan speed 👍
Just bought mine never had any enterprise grade equipment in the house. Wife might not be the happiest, but I'm geeking since I've been away from my job for sometime as a ws/vmware/rh server admin
I did this when I started out, picked up 2x HP DL380p 2Us, and then quickly realized I should start with consumer x86 hardware. Recently setup a Dell T7610 as my truenas core machine
That is very affordable option from what i seen. I just ordered one workstation t7820 with warranty, its with next scalable generation(1st one), but from the specs and options this gives you its very good option, and maybe would be even better for me too. I plan to use it as a server which workstations are not supposed to be, but still solid solution for continual operation i guess.
Thanks for making this video bud. Thinking of getting one myself for stable diffusion
love it … i bought it because i can 😎. finally none apologetic dude
Honestly this thing is remarkably similar to my HPE DL380G9
Pretty much all the mechanisms work the same, sound is the same, expandability is the same.
I run mine with an HPE Nvidia P100 tho and dual 500W PSUs in balanced mode. I tried running dual 1400W PSUs because the manual says it's mandatory for when you have a GPU in your Server and yeah... Turned my 140W idle to 165W idle... And as someone from Europe, that's not exactly nice.
Fun tidbit tho: My 1U server is much quieter than my 2U server, but it's also only single socket and a newer generation of CPU (and I can fully control fan-speed on that one, unlike the HPE)
I've looked at the HP servers on Ebay, and they do look very similar! I just cant seem to find them at as reasonable prices as the Dell machines
@@ComputersAndCoffeyProbably a geography thing. Here in Germany it's much easier to find HPE hardware than it is to find Dell hardware. My own DL380G9 is formerly from a German TV broadcaster. I've even seen an affordable DL380G10 on German ebay, but although every fiber of my being screams at me to buy it, I really don't need it 🥲
that duel socket 2011 makes my Kabylake NAS look like a potatoe and if the fans bug you Noctua does make hotswap fans of that size, they are a lot quieter then those but do offer the same or higher RPM depending on if those are 2000 or 2400 RPM fans.
That’s good to know. Thanks for the idea!
Liked it right after: "Buy it and figure out the solution later" and subscribed after I saw it in the closet haha
I got a Dell R900 for $80 like 6 months ago (4 cpus, 128gb ram)! Its been such an experience learning on it! I would love to know more about the powering of the GPU and anything else as the only way I'm powering any pcie devices is I've added a desktop psu along side the server. If I could power it all internally that would be sooo much easier!
I just upgraded one of my servers in the datacenter, i switches from a Dell R620 to a R640, and i think the biggest upgrade is DDR4 RAM ;-). Plus it didnt even cost a lot more then a used R620
Great Video btw! :)
using an dell optiplex 7050 with i5 gen 6 and 32gb of ram, ran proxmox with truenas, ubuntu server, freepbx, and windows 7 for torrent station, my one and only home server :)
well done. i used to learn that way.
I followed your path and it's glorious. we now have so much redundancy in 3.5 inch disks while still only filling half of the slots
One more advantage is that it supports SAS drives and you can get 16TB SAS drives for cheaper than SATA drives
Great video! I have a couple of r730 servers they are fantastic. Upgrade to a higher iDrac to use html5 and dump the java. Also since you have it in the closet without a monitor hooked up get a VGA dummy plug. Also know you can do ipmi commands to lower the fan speed it if is too loud!
I have a 710 w the Java based idrac…ver6? is there a way to update it to ver 7 ?
@@SteveHartmanVideos Pretty sure you need iDRAC7 or higher which the 710 does not support. I run a dedicated VM virtualbox on my pc for just that purpose, on it I have all the tools for older equipment (servers, switches, ASA etc). I run java, have a flash browser and run Firefox ~49 or 52 ESR so that the browser will never autoupdate. I think i installed java 7u45. Good luck!
@@callmebigpapa that’s a great idea actually… maybe an old windows 7 PC runnning VMware Player for desktop. As for Java, i think you have to find an older version from 2022 since the newer updates do no work anymore when i tried it. I gave up after that. Thanks for the reply.
@@SteveHartmanVideos the java version to use if i recall correctly is the 7. Its compatibile with windows 10/11 but. It can lead to security issues.
You can tweak the Fan Offset in the BIOS or iDRAC.
Us homelab server to hills estate en dubai
These are the type of shenanigans I prefer as well. My HPE DL380 Gen9 is crammed in a closet on 3D printed feet so the ears don't get borked. About to aquire almost 40 Dell and HPE servers so things are gonna get stupid quick...
I just bought an r630 and should've bought the xd version. Half length single slot gpu is a very narrow selection for transcoding and inference. Do yourself a favor and get a larger server so you can get better gpu for a self hosted media server and self hosted ai. The more vram, the better it is for inference.
r630 and r730 are pretty efficient but still too much power for most home server applications.
i have a r630 at it highest configuration except for ram 1.6TB is enough 64gb modules are relative cheap but 128gb modules cost nearly 5 times more. i set mine in power efficient mod so it draws on idle only 60W but on performance mod 200W is idle power but the compute power stays the same the oly thing is the response time the r630 needs 2 second from 0% to 100% on performance mode he would do this in 0.5sek. so as for my private use case i can live with the 2sek. i run many services for me on this but also i host 5 game servers for me and my friends and there friends. one of my services is a ai image creator that will need 50% of the whole compute power and also i have 3 nvidia quadro t1000 in the back pcie slots also being used only for ai and video transcoding. mine uses up to 700W at peak but under normal load over the day it uses only 70W at peak.
the r630 is really limited in internal space but it is more or less the same as the r730 but in a smaller case and it uses 2.5 drives instead of the cheaper 3.5 drives.
so yea it is a nice machine also cheap used to buy you can get one 300€ to 600€ for the basic or more common configuration 800€ to 1300€ you can get the rarer top models like e5 2699v3 or V4 cpu or with a h730 mini raid controller or the 4 port sfp+ 10gb nic and such rare options.
one quick note you can set over the idrac the fan min speed to 5% instead of the 30% is standard. 5% is enough airflow for idle also the system much quieter even the r630 was laud as a prebuild pc on idle. 100% is a whole other level of noise ^^' this scared me it the first start up ^^
Power edge systems are pretty sweet. I have a pair of R720s. Unfortunately I will have to retire them soon because, although they still work VERY well, they are VERY power hungry and not terribly efficient. Haswell (e5 v3) is getting long in the tooth ALSO, but you can pick up an 18 core top of the line V3 for about $40... so there is some value there. My custom 4U virtualization server is 2x 2699v3 (18core) and 5x GPUs has sort of replaced BOTH of my R720s in one go. I have been eyeballing R730s for how cheap they are, but I think it may be time to go to Epyc gen2 OR Skylake.
Sadly it has reached a point where picking up modern SFF or mini PCs is making more sense than EOL enterprise gear. Difference of idling 150-200 watts and 10-20 watts.
@@michaelmalenchek4575
It really depends on your use case.
Highly efficient systems are great for basic services, but I can't run 5x virtualized cloud arcade rigs on 8-16 threads and a single GPU... At least not performant ones.
Can you play games on a Windows 10 VM while Plex/jellyfin encoding on a separate Truenas VM with the Intel ARC ?
Fantastic server.
To be honest i wanted a server like this for my 1st just becouse i can as well . good vid.
I run a 5900X and an A4000 on a micro ATX board for plex. 30 watts idle. I have first gen Threadripper servers. Looking to replace with these.
having it in the closet is not a big issue. I would get a 2x4 so that you are not resting that server on the rack ears, it can dork them up. or get a vertical mount 2u/4u rack and hang it on the wall.
this guy is a legend
I remember when the R710 used to cost $400 - $500. I need to upgrade :D
You said "figured put a place to stick it"... where ? Any ideas ?
Can on a balcony sit ?
Even if in the summer is very hot and in the winter very cold ?
And how many watts does it consume per month ?
Hey, i actually have 2x E5-2690 v3s with heatsinks if you're interested! Heatsinks as well. Out of a Poweredge R630.
Hahaha... this is overkill for what you wanted! Like buying an 18 wheeler to go get your mail. However, if you learn how to work with a server like this and gain a ton of knowledge from it then its not a waste of money. It's a good investment for knowledge.
I currently have plans to put a server on the floor or under my bed
The power efficiency is pretty decent for the overall cost of the hardware compared to more recent generations that are not quite at that “commodity” level imo. Thoughts?
One video?! Lets see more! ;) I like your personality and enthusiasm 🤣 Also, did she make you remove it from the closet yet? haha.
I picked up a Dell R720XD on ebay for stupid cheap. Right now all I run on it is blue iris. Believe it or not, with only one service running its remarkably quiet. Because of space constraints my rack is in my office so all my gear HAS TO RUN QUIET. The air conditioner in my office is louder. Yes its a jet engine on cold boot but once it settles down its fine. I also had two 1100 watt power supplies delivered yesterday to replace the 750's it came with. A graphics card is coming soon. Your 730 is louder than my 720. I bet the graphics card is the cause. Dells are known to ramp up with graphics cards installed.
it is odd that these were selling in the USA for 400 dollars a year ago. the price never got that low in Germany. the r630 is 99 Euros barebone but then would need more 200 dollars to be prepped up
I was expecting it to be loud but holy crap when it’s starting up it is so loud I can’t turn it on when anyone else is home
could you update the fans to make it quieter? maybe use Noctura style fans?
"Not only am I impatient, but I'm also a cheap ass"
literally me
Unfortunately those two things conflict all the time 😂
Hey man I appreciate the dry sarcastic humor, shit was funny, im the same way. "If you have problems like i do and have money " lmao yup I absolutely don't need this server and im buying it anyway haha
Because i can...famous last words before the checking account is drained.
You probably don't need to power that card off both risers. Each riser can provide 225W out of it's connector.
You are right, it was just the easiest way for me to make the cables!
So, your monthly energy bill is maybe $15 a month? (I'm sure I didn't calculate it correctly) I really like the setup you have! I'm thinking this or, trying to find something that can be quiet / low wattage but run things like Prox Mox / Ubuntu or Windows. Great video!
I wanna buy one of these so bad ! !
You should try an R830, you can put 16 x 2.5" SSD's into it. :)
Great vid like to learn more on your setup plz. Wat was ram in server?
Did you have any issues getting the Arc A750 working? They work way better with rebar enabled and I read somewhere that is possible on the R730 but not really straightforward.
the intel arc card is interesting
but isn't its transcoding capabilities a bit reliant on resizable bar being turned on? I don't think the R730 has such an option in BIOS
Recommended for Audio/MIDI recording studio ?
LOL I wanna try this as a music making workstation for the hek of it ;-)
It doesn't cost that much to run a server. My Dell poweredge r710 costs about 12 dollars a month. I put my kids minecraft realm on to it so I'm saving ten dollars there so in reality it's only costing me 2 dollars a month
i would go used like you but i cant it has to be whisper quite because i live in a 2 bedroom house and i have 2 brother liveing with me one in the back bedroom and one in the liveing room i have a firewall and 2 servers running with my 10 gb network switch and you cant hear anything and he sleep good new out will have a place for a server rack so it dont be in the liveing room but well its in the liveing room i also used it to place my sourround sound system on it as well so its like a 2 in one
i think all usb are 3.0 there are not color coded like on an consumer pc. the internal one is meant for your os or recovery drive. also i have one question why only dual channel? came it like that?
I have a R730XD and my power consumption is like twice as much without GPU.
What CPUs?
I'm running at about 232w with 2 E5-2690v3's. No GPU. I'm thinking of selling or going down to just 1 CPU. I was running about 126-148W without the 2nd CPU.
i just recently bought one of these systems. my nas just isn't up to the job of streaming my media. i set everything up perfectly and no streams came through. i think i needed a gpu for transcoding but its just a 4 bay asustor nas and i don't know how to do all that. My poweredge i put a gpu right in it and bam, transcoding done. it may be overkill for a homelab but who cares right...😂
how are the r430 (1u) louder?
Is it worth today? I found 6 of them with 256 gb ram ddr4, 2 x intel 2690 v4, perc raid installed, x16 sff . 500 dollar per piece, is it worth ?
I think they’re still worth it if you’re looking for and need a lot of expansion with pci cards and hard drives because I just don’t think you’ll find anything with this many pci lanes and hard drive slots for the cost. If you can get by with less storage and expansion, some of the mini pcs like the minisforums are very compelling, especially considering some of them have a decent amount of connectivity like oculink and similar cpu performance with much lower power consumption and a tiny footprint.
Enterprise gear is the most efficient use per watt... there's a reason why all the ps's are Platinum or titanium rated (Actual, not chinese slap-on sticker)
i have one, how should i start installing it?
What is your opinion about servers like this? Me was "injected" that I shouldn't buy so servers because they need so much power and are big and they power/price isn't good? But no other mainboard has so many PCIe slots. And I want so many PCIe ports😊
my question is I got a deal on an r720 with originally 2.5 bays and the seller is saying its not going to work for my 3.5 drives. Any suggestions I've never touched these type of computers before so I dont know if im missing something obvious. In a normal computer its just a cable i plug it to a 2.5 or 3.5 no fuss but I'm not sure if dell's require an hdd bay . I dont mind frankesteining it a bit and just having mypair of hdd drives sitting there without being secure. Any recommendations?
Hi,.im interested in purchasing this server. I understand you are running proxmox and have 6 x 3.5" hds. Can you tell me how you have your storage setup? What raid configuration?
hey boss my old work gave me a free r640 and I got about 128 gb of memory and like a terabyte of storage and missing one fan, lmfao. at least I got both batteries and besides just loading random ass VM's on it using eSXI 7.0 i have nothing else to do with it
@@mosasa1307 that’s a hell of a machine - must have a pretty cool boss lol! I don’t know what I’d do with a machine like that honestly. My r730 is barely breaking sweat most days
Hey, got any idea if a R730 would make a decent gaming server choice?
@@skyluetz I do actually. I threw a 4090 in the server. The performance was underwhelming due to lowish single core performance. I wouldn’t personally recommend it.
OH! THIS IS SOMETHING I WAS CURIOUS ABOUT!!!! Hows the Arc at AV1 transcoding? How does the output look?
It can transcode several 1080p streams, I haven’t done many 4k streams, but it will do those fine as well. Quality is great! If I were building a media server, one of the new intel processors that has an iGPU would be a good option for what I spent on the graphics card and machine as the iGPUs support AV1
I buy R730 to someone online. And got scammed.. Paid the server but the seller not send
See I agree and disagree. I have an R730, but i have the more common 2.5in SAS drive configuration, and i have several reasons why i dont end up using it anymore. Primarily, just... Too much power. If i could retrofit it with the 3.5in hard drive bays, i would consider moving everything onto the R730 and just call it a day, but because it has the 2.5in bays im stuck using it basically as a hypervisor with no storage.
Also mine has a bug with c states and so it doesnt benefit from the power savings features that you get from that, and it idles at over 150watts... I dunno.
Nice..
Just picked me up a dual socket Lenovo rd640 with 128gb of ram. I love everything but the fans. I hate the fans lol
You are going to want a second server. How else are you going to organize backups otherwise?
Don't wait for your single server to fail and realize you are no longer able to access those snapshots 😢
If I ever got this thing my parent would kill me.
also PS. you don't need java to use the console, iDRAC8 have HTML5 console you just have to turn it on
You just have to pay a one-time fee for lifetime plex it's not like it's a monthly subscription
that vga slot is 8x, while the other is 16x, plus intel arc are not 100% perfect with this r730. get a rtx 30 or rtx 40 series and ull be better in stability. i tried the arc 770 and pc crash when installing chipset or inteldrivers very often, plus this card got low performance.
Machine primarily does transcoding so slot speed hasn’t been a huge factor. Has been rock solid with stability for months now as well with the Linux drivers. In fact, I’ve had the Arc, a 7900xtx, and now a 4090 in my main machine, and I’ve actually had the most driver and stability issues with the 4090 surprisingly.
@@ComputersAndCoffey did u manually edit fan profile ? i did it and server was very quiet.
@@ScruffyITA yes. It made a huge difference
$13 per month electricity in Indiana to run that
Do you plug both power supplies into the same power source like a UPS or separate power sources
I do the same and don’t use a ups yet. A UPS is definitely recommended though.
I got my self Lenovo TS440 5U Haswell server a year ago, kited it out in long run for same price I can get R730 2.5inch version with dual cpus for a fricking jellyfin and linux torrent storage. I'm scrub from Europ living in modest apartment and why do I need this so much whyyyyyyy. My wife will take my balls dude...
Too much electricity?
Make another video…u funny af when u said “the server doesn’t deserve more than that” 😂
are you running it 24/7/31?
what power consumption like ?
It uses 126 watts at idle and doesn’t go above 200 ever really. And that’s with the Arc A750, I’m sure without it, the draw would be even lower.
@@ComputersAndCoffey it is about 3kW a day or 90kW a month. or one megawatt a year in idle mode add its noise and I think your girlfriend has a point.
I built my own VMware ESXi Hypervisor server out of normal PC hardware that only idles at 55Watts of electricity. My ESXi box put these over kill enterprise servers shame. I'm running a total of 14 Virtual Machines on mine box with RHEL8, RHEL9, Ubuntu, Windows Server, UNIX FreeBSD, pfsense, Ansible....
@@eman0828 55 W is acceptable, especially if you use it as a switch (ovSwitch), router (Vyos, pfsence) it is already about -20W of the hardware devices.
@@user-0xDEEDBEEF Yeah my unmanaged 24 port Cisco Switch uses about 17 Watts. I also built a TrueNAS server out of standard Desktop hardware with an ATX board. That thing only idles at 35Watts. I use to own two 1U Dell PowerEdge servers back in the day. Will never go back to thoses. They aren't needed for homelabs. Most data centers build their own white box servers esp goo gle, fb , like what I just did.
If you move to a colder climate you would need to upgrade your server farm to stay warm. Don't listen to those central heating losers. BTW, Nvidia P40s are pretty cheap and you can use them for transcoding, Stable diffusion, AI and ML.