Fun fact the P520 comes with windows 10 workstation edition license hard coded in the MB, eBay sellers sell them with win10 home, a few command prompts and you can pull the license key off the MB and upgrade to win11 workstation for free Edit: What i'm trying to say above is that if you use this box as a Proxmox host, create a Windows 10 VM with the CPU set to host, you will then be able to use the embedded OS key to activate the VM
@@FINNIUSORION it's fast, it's customizable, it's open source, it's free to use, the rest of the world is using Linux on servers. And I use Linux on my dekstop pc for years with much pleasure. Try Linux Mint for example.
@@boneappletee6416 I just recently pulled an old am2 ddr2 machine out of my closet and set it up with opensuse. I have a bit over one week of Linux experience now lol
The PCI slot makes a lot of sense because it's a Workstation, meant for Work. For small industries that use obscure or proprietary hardware controllers which are not economically upgradable yet. Audio system cards for small radio stations. Weather sensor stations. Robotics controllers. Etc. etc... Notably it makes tranferring a backup off an older RAID array, to the new upgrade system extra simple.
He literally said that in the video lmfao. You were the exact person he was talking about finger flying across the keyboard before you finished watching.
I actually have a p510. It came with a E5 v3 6 core and 32 GB of ram. I upgraded to a E5 v4 10 core and 128gb of RAM. It has 4 HDD bays with trays and there's essentially a backplane in it. It also came with a Lenovo Flex adapter (proprietary) which holds one gen 3 nvme and one SATA m.2. I added a single nvme card and it's dead silent. Running Truenas scale (passed through the sata controller) and several VMs. I can't complain. I paid $100 for it from a local seller.
From a mechanic, never torque your way to loosen a screw. Pretend you are an impact drill by applying bits of tourque and releases. Another words, pump the screw driver and you will save your bits along with strip less screws that way. You will also find out that screws and bolts break their tightness easier too.
holy crap, it's Skylake?! this IS a great deal! it seems like these "bargain systems" I see reviewed on YT are almost always Broadwell or older which is really rough on power-performance ratio and just performance in general. thanks for checking it out for us!
The thing that kills any enthusiasm I have for most of these "cheap" home server solutions is the idle power draw. Like, sure you're paying $200 for this or whatever on ebay, but then if you just idle it for a year it costs about $80 in electricity where I am. That means if I were to hold onto it for even just 4 years, it's costing me $520 in total including the purchase price, before I even use the thing for any actual work! Then you're dealing with slower speeds from the ~8 generation old architecture too. This is why I tend to go for mini PCs for my server needs. Nothing beats a ~4.5w power draw on an always-on device. My last was a nuc i5 with the 8259U in it that served as my media server, dev server, and recently NVR. It was starting to struggle when I added a few more cameras to the NVR, so I just bought another to replace it, this time a 13th gen 1340P nuc model for ~$450. A little more pricey, yes, but it won't take up an entire shelf on my already cramped network stack, and the iris XE graphics can do plenty with hardware acceleration, not to mention it's a 12 core CPU so there's plenty of resources to go around. For me, an equivalent desktop class workstation with a xeon that has at least 8 cores and similar single-threaded performance (which I rely on heavily for things like video transcoding for burning in subtitles) would just be too much money comparatively speaking, honestly just the CPU itself would probably cost more than the entire NUC! Then if you add operating costs, that $8/year electricity really adds up (or rather, doesn't add up to that much) over time too. The energy savings alone means the more expensive mini pc's basically pay for themselves over 3-5 years of use compared to a cheaper big box server. But most of this is because I run CPU-intensive, often single-threaded workloads all the time. I suppose if you're doing something more memory dependent or GPU dependent, the ability to expand that much further is a plus.
You don't need anything more powerful than n100 for transcoding, and for subtitles you need to check your client settings, direct play is the way to go, and with that even pi4 works fine.
YOOOOO I got mine back in May because of another RUclips video I saw last year where they used it for a cheap "gaming" pc and immediately saw the application for it being a server, it's cool to see one of my favorite RUclipsrs reviewing it and answering a few questions I've had in the BIOS settings area lol
@@cjmoss51 actually it's "Return of the Console Killer PC" by "Iceburg Tech" that I saw , it's not exactly the P520 in that video but it got me going in the right direction to find the P520 lol
8:18 I saw a setting off by default that allows thunderbolt in BIOS and requires that you select where it's connected. You may need to enable that if you haven't. I bought one because of your video lol
I once had the same thought, and I once built an epyc server thinking that this is all I'll ever need. Fast-forward to today. I didn't realize how wrong I was... With all the AI and LLM stuff.. one GPU turn into two then three then... 70w idle also turns into a hundred, then few hundreds. I think I have lost the way at this point.
On one hand: that's some lenovo proprietary junk. On the other hand, though, you can actually buy spare parts and replacement somewhat into the future and it's actually easy to find what exactly you need in most cases.
yup my grandfather's current desktop had some issues a few years ago and after looking into it, I figured the power supply was dying and the motherboard had scorch marks where the funny magic electricity escaped I bought a motherboard with a cpu (didn't need it) for $13 shipped on ebay lol. I ended up also upgrading his ram at the same time and threw an SSD into it. That was 6 years ago and I haven't worked on it since, and he still uses it daily. Parts for that machine are plentiful and cheap.
@@RoshiGaming yep, I ditched my last x220 from 2011 just last year and it went to serve yet another user. Seem like proprietary, yet abundant is better than standard and rare.
Honnestly was skeptical at the thumbnail. Guess it was a good hook. But man haven't wanted to buy a new pc this much in a while. Fell in love with my gen 4 x1 carbon and just moved to a new yoga 9i. Yes lenovo does proprietary stuff. But their professional stuff is a notch above. Its genuinely a delight to use. It just works for me.
This is the exact machine I'm considering for my new ML workstation. Might even go with the 920 for expanding memory. Thank you for the run down for this.
For people wanting more cores/RAM, Skylake Xeon Scalable has also become pretty affordable recently. The Lenovo P720/920, HP Z6/Z8 G4 and Dell T7820/T7920 are all options, with 6 memory channels instead of 4 and multiple sockets.
The HP workstation are dogs, I have used a couple generations of the Z8 workstations and they run about 200 mhz below the base frequency don’t get within 500 mhz of the boost frequency. I had the IT guys as well as HP support work on the problem and everybody has been left scratching their head.
I have a p520 and got lucky w/ the 900w PSU and all the HDD cages for $150 shipped. I have since added 128gb of RAM, an x4 NVME adapter, and RX 7900 GRE. I can play modern games at over 100fps, its phenomenal!
I picked one of these up after watching your video and it has been nice so far. I did end up getting the Icy Dock 3-Bay Adapter since the lenovo cage would take over a month to be delivered and I don't have a 3D Printer. While it does work the way that the 5.25" bays are secured in the P520 isn't the best, and I can't use their bracket to lock it in place because of the way it is designed. I could probably put my own holes into it so that the securing bracket works, but I don't move the server a ton and it fits in well enough that it isn't just sliding around if I move the case a little.
Watched this vid when you first uploaded it, when I wasn't in the market for a new homelab server, but came across it again when researching Xeon workstations to possibly replace my gaggle of old NUCs in my Proxmox cluster. Just ordered my own P520 off of the 'bay earlier today (W-2145, 4x16GB DDR4-2666) and I can't WAIT to start messing around with it.
Fantastic video! I didn't consider looking at Xeon servers due to high power demand, but these workstations are a reasonable alternative to have ample ECC memory, PCIE lanes and drive expansion options without crazy high power usage. And I could actually make use of that old PCI slot. Well done! Thank you! 👍
I bought one and turned it into a powerful workstation/media server. I put in a 10TB hard drive, an RX6600, a Wireless/Bluetooth card, and upgraded the memory to 64GB quad-channel. When I bought it, it came with a 512GB M.2 SSD. I use it for gaming, content creation, and livestream. Honestly it’s a really versatile platform.
One final comment (sorry, I primary a p520c and have a second one as a server) the w-2145 is the sweet spot value wise, you can get at around $80 and is 8c/16t and you can get retired iMac Pro specific xeons that fit in here for very inexpensive and work with no compatibility issues. You also should be able to bifurcate the x8 slot with the latest bios
@@Saphykitten hey, appreciate this info. Do you happen to know if the p520c has remote management options available? Also, do you know how many 3.5" drives the case supports stock? I've been trying to find that information and haven't been successful.
I have this model as my home lab server with Proxmox and a number of VMs and containers. It’s worth noting you can use the 2 NVMe slots with ZFS to get raid-ish functionality without the VROC expense. It was trivial to setup in proxmox.
I really love these for homelabs as long as you have the space for it. They're super nice to work with (bar the proprietary nature of it of course) and the only reason I didn't go for it is most of my server load just needs maybe 2 PCIe devices and most importantly, I just think rack mount looks nice albeit louder, more power hungry but in my case, cheaper up front cost but very timing dependent. Anyone looking to play with hardware more, might be trying out different PCIe devices, or just doesn't have a specific goal in mind, I can't recommend these enough especially for a lot of the prices you'll find.
Just a fun note, I have several of the HP equivalent Server PCs (z840, z6 G4, etc) and they're very similar to this. The only thing I can say is that the HPs have a bit more on the tool-less and the drive bays make a satisfying clicking noise to let you know they're secure. Been using them for various server applications and they really are great for first time server applications, even if you don't plan on upgrading or expanding.
Gotta appreciate your real world vids. It's nice to see some cool corporate stuff from time to time, but what I really care about is stuff I can personally afford and make use of.
I just bought an HP Z440 for my home server, and I'm starting to get buyers remorse. I could've gotten the dual CPU model (the Z640) for $10 more and now seeing this next gen one for not much more than that, I'm feeling even more buyers remorse 😭
I have a z440 that runs my truenas/jellyfin. It’s a good machine, it’s not as good as the p520, but it has a lot of life in it. You also can put it in a normal atx case, or in my instance, I have it in a 4u rack mount.
I got a Z840 running dual E5-2667v4s and 128gb of ram (8x16gb) working as my first NAS and occasional cloud server although the second part has a WIP. It will probably end up as an off site backup server when I eventually get a rack setup.
@@Saphykitten I rehomed a Z420 motherboard a few years ago and would not recommend. While the form factor is standard ATX, there's a lot of proprietary headers on the board that require hacky workarounds. From memory, there's a PSU adapter needed, fan and power switch headers are nonstandard, and there's a proprietary temperature sensor that the BIOS will complain about if absent.
I have both the Z440 and the G4 Z4 which is the next newest one. Both are fantastic. I installed some highish end nvidia cards. They game pretty well at 1080. Its hard to beat for $350.
You really do get bang for your buck if you're willing to deal with proprietary this and that, although getting into an actual 'server' class system for less than 200 bucks, with a little fooling around and some minor upgrades - even free if you're lucky, this thing really could spice up your network pretty impressively. Good call on this one!
i'm currently in the process of getting a P720 ready for a proxmox virtualization server. 4x40TB WD RED, 256Gb DDR4 REG ECC 2600Mhz, 12x4TB 2,5' WD Red via 2x SAS Controller and Adaptors for 6x2,5 in 5,25' Bay, 2x Xeon 6138 (each 20c/40t), Nvidia Quadro K4200 for Jellyfin HD/4K Encoding, and 2x 4TB M.2 NVME in Raid0 for the OS and Storage of Images.
Yooo Hardware Haven, I bought a ThinkStation P510 for my home server last year! It seemed like the cheapest way to get everything I wanted for my homelab. It was cheap and easy to add a lot of upgrades, and it has been a reliable and powerful beast of a home server that I've been very happy with. Power usage on mine is higher than I wish it was, but then again I've got two GPUs, four hard drives, an upgraded Xeon with way more cores than I actually need, and a ton of cards in it so that might be on me. I think this is an excellent way to go for a home server!
Yeah baby! P520! *beams at mine over there, which is also used as a gaming PC for my kid, sporting a 2135, 32gbs ram, a couple M.2's and an ARC750) Now go look at a PowerEdge T110-II! My old standby main server!
@@armandourbina3986 I have two 6+2 pin connector cables attached to the mobo, with it connected 1x8 & 1x6. I have yet to get Resizable Bar working but even without it the setup is wonderful for gaming.
Machines like this get a lot of grief from people ( who have never owned one). I have one with a 2245 8 core processor, 64 gigs of quad channel DDR4 and a 3060 TI video card. It's got a couple of m.2 slots. It's a solid machine. Built like a tank and probably the most stable computer I've ever had so far
I bought one of these over a year ago for about $180 without hard drive and graphics card. Installed a 1tb nvme and a 2070 and use it as my main driver for IT and Photography. Best purchase i made for that year
16:10 You need a CPU which has an integrated GPU to see the video. And even then, it needs to be plugged in to a monitor or use a dongle that fakes it.
I have a p520 myself, and I use it as a workstation. I didn't realize it uses bifurcation as well. Mine came with a 512gb ssd and 64GB of ram. I added an AMD RX 6600, a 4TB nvme, and I added a wifi 6 card. I love this computer. It's not super fast, but it does everything I like to do.
Great video. About 4 months ago I bought a dell Precision 5820, easily the greatest computer purchase of my life. It was $650 AUD with 128gb of ram, an nvidia p1000 and the model up from the chip in this video the w-2145 which is an 8 core 16 thread cpu. If anyone is in the market for a home server these types of machines are incredible. My unit didn't come with an extra pci power adapter, so I picked one up for 20 bucks to run a 1070
Dang, I've been using an old Dell Intel 4th gen sff office pc as a NAS for a couple years and this seems like it might be worth the upgrade, currently i'm limited on drive space, sata ports, and overall function (I crammed 2 3.5 hdd but the top won't fit back on so i'm hotrodding it atm 😅) This would def handle most if not all of the future projects I may want to do (currently only running Plex and Home assistant but would love to get into more things like game server hosting and stuff.
I looooooooove seeing your content man it's always so simple and you are always humble when explaining things you are not an expert in, I have started my homelab journey recently after starting watching your content so really really appreciate it so much and keeeeep up the very astonishing work 😊
Maybe your 10Gtech SFP+ card prevented C6 CPU idle state? Try without it? Check out Wolfgang's videos on forcing cards to support PCIe sleep, or whatever. I've not tried that yet. Easier to remove the card and measure.
I picked up a cheap Lenovo P700 with dual(!) Xeon E5-2620v3 and a Quadro K2000. Threw in 16GB RAM, 5x8TB HDDs in RAID5 and 2x500GB SSD in RAID1 for OS. Ran up Proxmox VE, and Plex container plus lots of other containers, and use it as a general file server. It's a beast for the price I paid.
I have a Brickstation P520 myself, it is a serious machine that I generally use for gaming and A/V rendering, or writing silly comments on RUclips. You could use the P520 as home server but its primary design is a workstation, it may not have some features that server systems would have. Lenovo's ThinkSystem machines are server-grade models and might be more suitable. Also, I did some measurements and found that the P520 could potentially accept consumer hardware. The case has punch-outs where a standard PSU could mount, and the motherboard could accommodate a standard mATX or ATX board. However, the case only provides about 110mm of clearance for a CPU cooler, and the front panel uses a proprietary edge connector that would need to be removed and replaced with a new power switch.
Glad to see you have the sponsorship from UGreen! But I must say that within my many purchases from them, I had one issue with their Mac dock/ usb converter which burnt my ex-fiancé’s MacBook Pro…😢
We like Lenovo boxes. We have an M93 I7 in the kitchen, a pair of P320 I7 tiny boxes driving the TVs for all viewing and streaming. A p330 tiny with I9 and P1000 for portable theater. Lastly I have a fully loaded T15G laptop. Also a great buy are the used HP Z800 and Z840 workstations.
There was a dirt cheap ex Stadia Dev p520 on eBay here in the UK back in October and I considered buying it to use as a desktop gaming machine/ workstation but decided to custom build instead. Now that I’m building a home server I am gutted cause what a sick machine that would have been.
I've suggested these Xeon W-21xx CPU workstations on your videos before. I bought one myself several months ago. I have an HP Z4 G4. The proprietary junk is a little annoying, but replacement parts are dirt cheap on Ebay if you need them. Proprietary workstation/server equipment is way cheaper on the used market than standard stuff, so if you want budget options with a lot of features, that's the best way to go. I bought it for something cheap with a lot of PCIe lanes and high maximum RAM capacity.
@@nootnewt I prefer the PCIe slot layout on the HP Z4 G4. It goes empty slot, x16, x4, x16, x4, x8. That lets me put two x16/x8 cards and an x8 card in with each card having free space between them for airflow. The Lenovo has the x8 slot is right above the first x16 and thus has less airflow for that one slot. If I remember correctly, the Dell model has the same PCIe slot issue and a more cramped chassis. Most x8 cards I'd look at like NICs and SAS adapters need a lot of airflow and having it that tight in there makes them harder to cool adequately without getting very loud.
Great review video. In the future could you include a few more power numbers along side the testing, it would help those concerned about the cost of power verses performance verses use case verses setup cost. TY
PCIe lanes and remote access is everything I want in a system, especially if it is used as a server. The closest thing to the Thing Station is technically a used AMD TR or lower class, which are still very expensive. Or the way around ASrock's rack motherboards for AM4/5, which are also expensive but only have a maximum of 24 consumer PCIe lanes.
You inspired me to have a search for something similar after watching this. I'd wanted a workstation platform for a while, but could never seem to find what I wanted, or could afford. After searching a little for P520's, there wasn't a lot in Australia, and they usually had the W2135 or the W2123 CPU. With the help of a certain LLM, I found out the competitors from the other brands, and then found an HP Z4 G4 with a W-2145 for reasonable money ($285USD) I plan of definitely moving the portainer setup from my old 7th gen Intel NUC i5 to this new server, as a VM in proxmox. The only thing I'm still trying to decide, is if it's worth moving my OPNSense box to this also, and then the NAS as well, and combine all 3 of my current systems into the one. I'm fairly certain that it will have more than enough power to do what I want, and I'm sure that one system would use much less power than 3.
This seems like a good system to invest into as I begin my journey into building a home server that has the potential to grow with me. Thanks for doing the homework and providing all this great information. There's a lot of flexibility and features packed into that box!
You should take a look at the dell precision T7600/T7610. It’s an older workstation but still pretty usable and affordable. It can go up to 512gb ddr3 ram, I believe it can support up to 40tb of hdds. And can have as many as 3gpus installed at once as it has a 1,300 watt psu.
Dell an HP also have some pretty good refurbished/second hand offerings of the same generation (Dell T5820/HP G4 Z4) that you can find for around the same price. I have the slightly older T5810 and after throwing in some more ram and upgrading the CPU it served me well as a Proxmox server until I upgraded to Epyc Rome. If your budget stretches a little farther there are also Epyc Naples cpu/motherboard/ram combos all over eBay for pretty decent prices and you avoid the proprietary nonsense (but it's not a complete system).
got a load of these to be scraped, we all in IT took one & saved a few for parts. Powersupply can be bit doggy as we had to swap out 2 of them after they blew. Otherwise they have been class for us learning how to work with VM's. Would like some more Sata ports on the board but sure it was free.
Subbed to the channel because I am thinking of making a truenas server to do some stuff with zfs and maybe something crazy with intel optane and cacheing. With all the options for pcie lanes, this seems like a mich better platform to learn on for me and means I can leave my omv server running on the x570 board I have. Appreciate all the content and hope to learn more.
The Dell Precision workstation 5520s are all over ebay too and simular to this. Lots of tooless easy expansions, etc.. I tested one with a Kil-a-watt and it hovered around 70 to 90 watts at idle on a windows 11 login in screen with one nvme boot drive and two spinning disks.
Solid deal at that price - the case alone would have fetched that price 5 years ago. I i feel that with advent of Z690-Z790 or AMD4 or AMD5, these will drop in price even more.
got Dell Precision T7820 for 358 eur, 4 bays, but only 16 gigs, planned to upgrade later with another 128 gigs or so. had to pay duties form UK to eu tho, which was another 100 i guess. still not bad for what it is. Love the build, expandability, seems future proof to me.
I found out that proxmox somehow makes pretty high idle power draw. When i installed pop_os i got 10 watt less in idle. Maybe bc proxmox is using relatively old kernel? I don't know. Try to boot different os from the usb stick and see if it changes anything.
I got one of these and I liked that much that I got a second one. One is my home server with proxmox, virtualized truenas and many other VMs like my development server, pre production server. I have it with 64gb of ram and haven’t had any issues. The second one is for gaming and it works amazing with a 3070
thats my major gripe with desktop workstations from Dell, Lenovo, HP. It only has space for 2 3.5" drives from the get go with xtra useless space. too bad cant have room for maybe 6 drives not including ssd's or m.2 going off an adapter
Fan noise level if any? 15:48 -- Intel AMT got patched for CVE-2017-5689 per SA-00075. Great video overall, once again 👍 Your b-roll closeups are tack sharp; shining the system was worth! Kindest regards, neighbours and friends.
It does seem like a pretty versatile system. The real heart breaker for me is the power supply. I can live with proprietary for a lot of things but power supplies make it really difficult in my experience. That said it might well be a system worth checking out regardless. Thank you for the accessible content as always!
The main reason the expansion bays are not found anywhere is because since these are enterprise-class machines, most businesses had server storage, and didnt need their users to have tons of local storage.
Good to know that it can do headless mode without GPU. AMT seems to be useful. Biggest issue: limited chassis space for modern GPU, proprietary motherboard and PSU. PSU too weak for dual GPU (some user reported instability when using dual 3090 or even dual 300W TDP Quadro card ), and no upgrade path.
I've got something similar and it works great for running truenas. Dell precision T3600, I've definitely gotta get creative sometimes because of the proprietary stuff but for a $20 marketplace find I was on cloud nine. 😂 Great vid!
I have been screaming about this thing since I got one like 2 years ago for ~$200 on ebay. The P520c would make a better workstation though b/c is also just as cheap, can do many of the same things and fit 2 GPUs. Re: NVMe tests: A single NVMe drive outperforming RAID zfs between 4 drives bifurcated actually somewhat makes sense. You are r/wing to 4 different drives vs one. This is also a good way to wear out your drives fairly faster. I feel as though using them separately via passthrough is a better use case.
imo the hardest part abt a home server isn’t really about the computer parts but the case itself. it’s hard to find an affordable one with multiple hdd bays (non-itx)
I'm getting a ZimaCube Pro Personal Cloud - RAM Upgrade (1235U/64G/256G) in the next couple days and I've really found your videos useful. I'm going to use it for a home web app server, and I'm looking for a video you've possibly done on that, or perhaps a new idea :) Thanks for everything!
Why not run an Intel Arc GPU for video encoding and decoding? Should be doable since there are 75W available via the PCI slots. Maybe not an 770, but perhaps the 300 series
13:41 if you run a raid 1 with that many drives you may get better performance. i run my prox os drives in 1-0. when i get more nvme drives i’ll change that.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
It doesn’t cost an ARM because it’s X86
No RISC involved
@@dingomatic RISC-y move, but it paid off!
😂😂😂
ba dum tss
Bing!
Hardware Haven - A seriously good channel that's affordable to watch.
Well. It's free.
Zero is always a fair price.
That cost a time that cannot be bought
Fun fact the P520 comes with windows 10 workstation edition license hard coded in the MB, eBay sellers sell them with win10 home, a few command prompts and you can pull the license key off the MB and upgrade to win11 workstation for free
Edit: What i'm trying to say above is that if you use this box as a Proxmox host, create a Windows 10 VM with the CPU set to host, you will then be able to use the embedded OS key to activate the VM
I use Linux and you should try it too.
@@MelroyvandenBergwhy?
@@FINNIUSORION it's fast, it's customizable, it's open source, it's free to use, the rest of the world is using Linux on servers. And I use Linux on my dekstop pc for years with much pleasure. Try Linux Mint for example.
@@FINNIUSORION have you tried Linux? The Workstation and server performance and usability is much better than Windows. At least in my honest opinion
@@boneappletee6416 I just recently pulled an old am2 ddr2 machine out of my closet and set it up with opensuse. I have a bit over one week of Linux experience now lol
Now watch as the ebay prices skyrocket over the next week 😂
W0rd. Get in early before the decently-configured ones go over $400!
they did.
@rerereuj E5 v4 Xeons are Broadwell, the P520s use Skylake Xeons, which are 8th gen architecture. Broadwell is 5th gen.
@@resolution7482 just looked at prices here in Germany, it's at least double to tripple of those in the video or the comments, even CPU only.
The PCI slot makes a lot of sense because it's a Workstation, meant for Work.
For small industries that use obscure or proprietary hardware controllers which are not economically upgradable yet.
Audio system cards for small radio stations.
Weather sensor stations.
Robotics controllers.
Etc. etc...
Notably it makes tranferring a backup off an older RAID array, to the new upgrade system extra simple.
That's why people are moving from hardware solutions to things like zFS and UnRAID in the enterprise anyways.
He literally said that in the video lmfao. You were the exact person he was talking about finger flying across the keyboard before you finished watching.
I actually have a p510. It came with a E5 v3 6 core and 32 GB of ram. I upgraded to a E5 v4 10 core and 128gb of RAM. It has 4 HDD bays with trays and there's essentially a backplane in it. It also came with a Lenovo Flex adapter (proprietary) which holds one gen 3 nvme and one SATA m.2. I added a single nvme card and it's dead silent. Running Truenas scale (passed through the sata controller) and several VMs. I can't complain. I paid $100 for it from a local seller.
really just a fantastic deal.
From a mechanic, never torque your way to loosen a screw. Pretend you are an impact drill by applying bits of tourque and releases. Another words, pump the screw driver and you will save your bits along with strip less screws that way. You will also find out that screws and bolts break their tightness easier too.
holy crap, it's Skylake?! this IS a great deal! it seems like these "bargain systems" I see reviewed on YT are almost always Broadwell or older which is really rough on power-performance ratio and just performance in general. thanks for checking it out for us!
@ 4:13 "hardware license module" is the PERFECT description for a $250 RAID controller haha cheers for that one
It's just DRM, from size alone there can't be more than either a flash chip or something like a YubiKey.
Thanks!
The thing that kills any enthusiasm I have for most of these "cheap" home server solutions is the idle power draw. Like, sure you're paying $200 for this or whatever on ebay, but then if you just idle it for a year it costs about $80 in electricity where I am. That means if I were to hold onto it for even just 4 years, it's costing me $520 in total including the purchase price, before I even use the thing for any actual work! Then you're dealing with slower speeds from the ~8 generation old architecture too.
This is why I tend to go for mini PCs for my server needs. Nothing beats a ~4.5w power draw on an always-on device. My last was a nuc i5 with the 8259U in it that served as my media server, dev server, and recently NVR. It was starting to struggle when I added a few more cameras to the NVR, so I just bought another to replace it, this time a 13th gen 1340P nuc model for ~$450. A little more pricey, yes, but it won't take up an entire shelf on my already cramped network stack, and the iris XE graphics can do plenty with hardware acceleration, not to mention it's a 12 core CPU so there's plenty of resources to go around. For me, an equivalent desktop class workstation with a xeon that has at least 8 cores and similar single-threaded performance (which I rely on heavily for things like video transcoding for burning in subtitles) would just be too much money comparatively speaking, honestly just the CPU itself would probably cost more than the entire NUC! Then if you add operating costs, that $8/year electricity really adds up (or rather, doesn't add up to that much) over time too. The energy savings alone means the more expensive mini pc's basically pay for themselves over 3-5 years of use compared to a cheaper big box server.
But most of this is because I run CPU-intensive, often single-threaded workloads all the time. I suppose if you're doing something more memory dependent or GPU dependent, the ability to expand that much further is a plus.
You don't need anything more powerful than n100 for transcoding, and for subtitles you need to check your client settings, direct play is the way to go, and with that even pi4 works fine.
YOOOOO I got mine back in May because of another RUclips video I saw last year where they used it for a cheap "gaming" pc and immediately saw the application for it being a server, it's cool to see one of my favorite RUclipsrs reviewing it and answering a few questions I've had in the BIOS settings area lol
Is it sad that I know exactly what YT channel and video you are talking about? Toasty Bros 6 mos ago (watch?v=hI9nW2K0G-I)
@@cjmoss51 actually it's "Return of the Console Killer PC" by "Iceburg Tech" that I saw , it's not exactly the P520 in that video but it got me going in the right direction to find the P520 lol
Literally just got mine delivered yesterday, it's an absolute unit of an affordable homeserver
I've been running a P250 I upgraded for a year and a half now.
I absolutely love mine and have been recommending it to others!
8:18
I saw a setting off by default that allows thunderbolt in BIOS and requires that you select where it's connected.
You may need to enable that if you haven't.
I bought one because of your video lol
I once had the same thought, and I once built an epyc server thinking that this is all I'll ever need.
Fast-forward to today.
I didn't realize how wrong I was...
With all the AI and LLM stuff.. one GPU turn into two then three then...
70w idle also turns into a hundred, then few hundreds.
I think I have lost the way at this point.
Lost in capitalism rabbit hole
@@EVR1AL💯💯😅
On one hand: that's some lenovo proprietary junk. On the other hand, though, you can actually buy spare parts and replacement somewhat into the future and it's actually easy to find what exactly you need in most cases.
yup
my grandfather's current desktop had some issues a few years ago and after looking into it, I figured the power supply was dying and the motherboard had scorch marks where the funny magic electricity escaped
I bought a motherboard with a cpu (didn't need it) for $13 shipped on ebay lol. I ended up also upgrading his ram at the same time and threw an SSD into it.
That was 6 years ago and I haven't worked on it since, and he still uses it daily. Parts for that machine are plentiful and cheap.
@@RoshiGaming yep, I ditched my last x220 from 2011 just last year and it went to serve yet another user. Seem like proprietary, yet abundant is better than standard and rare.
Honnestly was skeptical at the thumbnail. Guess it was a good hook. But man haven't wanted to buy a new pc this much in a while. Fell in love with my gen 4 x1 carbon and just moved to a new yoga 9i. Yes lenovo does proprietary stuff. But their professional stuff is a notch above. Its genuinely a delight to use. It just works for me.
This is the exact machine I'm considering for my new ML workstation. Might even go with the 920 for expanding memory. Thank you for the run down for this.
For people wanting more cores/RAM, Skylake Xeon Scalable has also become pretty affordable recently. The Lenovo P720/920, HP Z6/Z8 G4 and Dell T7820/T7920 are all options, with 6 memory channels instead of 4 and multiple sockets.
The HP workstation are dogs, I have used a couple generations of the Z8 workstations and they run about 200 mhz below the base frequency don’t get within 500 mhz of the boost frequency. I had the IT guys as well as HP support work on the problem and everybody has been left scratching their head.
I have a p520 and got lucky w/ the 900w PSU and all the HDD cages for $150 shipped. I have since added 128gb of RAM, an x4 NVME adapter, and RX 7900 GRE. I can play modern games at over 100fps, its phenomenal!
I picked one of these up after watching your video and it has been nice so far. I did end up getting the Icy Dock 3-Bay Adapter since the lenovo cage would take over a month to be delivered and I don't have a 3D Printer. While it does work the way that the 5.25" bays are secured in the P520 isn't the best, and I can't use their bracket to lock it in place because of the way it is designed.
I could probably put my own holes into it so that the securing bracket works, but I don't move the server a ton and it fits in well enough that it isn't just sliding around if I move the case a little.
Watched this vid when you first uploaded it, when I wasn't in the market for a new homelab server, but came across it again when researching Xeon workstations to possibly replace my gaggle of old NUCs in my Proxmox cluster. Just ordered my own P520 off of the 'bay earlier today (W-2145, 4x16GB DDR4-2666) and I can't WAIT to start messing around with it.
Fantastic video! I didn't consider looking at Xeon servers due to high power demand, but these workstations are a reasonable alternative to have ample ECC memory, PCIE lanes and drive expansion options without crazy high power usage. And I could actually make use of that old PCI slot. Well done! Thank you! 👍
I bought one and turned it into a powerful workstation/media server. I put in a 10TB hard drive, an RX6600, a Wireless/Bluetooth card, and upgraded the memory to 64GB quad-channel. When I bought it, it came with a 512GB M.2 SSD. I use it for gaming, content creation, and livestream. Honestly it’s a really versatile platform.
Woa, i jumped in early today, been looking for a nice cheap server and this one might be perfect
It really is.
You can also get different wattage PSU's for it.
Mine has the 900W.
This system has a lot of flexibility.
Fun fact, the p520 has a proprietary motherboard, the p520c does not, and is a standard matx only needing a 24pin to 14pin PSU adapter.
One final comment (sorry, I primary a p520c and have a second one as a server) the w-2145 is the sweet spot value wise, you can get at around $80 and is 8c/16t and you can get retired iMac Pro specific xeons that fit in here for very inexpensive and work with no compatibility issues. You also should be able to bifurcate the x8 slot with the latest bios
That's useful information. Thanks
Thanks for this
@@Saphykitten hey, appreciate this info. Do you happen to know if the p520c has remote management options available? Also, do you know how many 3.5" drives the case supports stock? I've been trying to find that information and haven't been successful.
nvm, I see in the documentation that the p520c does support intel amt.
I have this model as my home lab server with Proxmox and a number of VMs and containers. It’s worth noting you can use the 2 NVMe slots with ZFS to get raid-ish functionality without the VROC expense. It was trivial to setup in proxmox.
I really love these for homelabs as long as you have the space for it. They're super nice to work with (bar the proprietary nature of it of course) and the only reason I didn't go for it is most of my server load just needs maybe 2 PCIe devices and most importantly, I just think rack mount looks nice albeit louder, more power hungry but in my case, cheaper up front cost but very timing dependent. Anyone looking to play with hardware more, might be trying out different PCIe devices, or just doesn't have a specific goal in mind, I can't recommend these enough especially for a lot of the prices you'll find.
There's a rack mount adapter for these also. Big money for drawer slides from Lenovo, or a 3D printed option on printables.
Have exactly this system, except 128GB RAM. A big attraction for me was ECC memory. Running Proxmox w/ ZFS. It has been rock solid.
Just a fun note, I have several of the HP equivalent Server PCs (z840, z6 G4, etc) and they're very similar to this. The only thing I can say is that the HPs have a bit more on the tool-less and the drive bays make a satisfying clicking noise to let you know they're secure. Been using them for various server applications and they really are great for first time server applications, even if you don't plan on upgrading or expanding.
Gotta appreciate your real world vids. It's nice to see some cool corporate stuff from time to time, but what I really care about is stuff I can personally afford and make use of.
I just bought an HP Z440 for my home server, and I'm starting to get buyers remorse. I could've gotten the dual CPU model (the Z640) for $10 more and now seeing this next gen one for not much more than that, I'm feeling even more buyers remorse 😭
I have a z440 that runs my truenas/jellyfin. It’s a good machine, it’s not as good as the p520, but it has a lot of life in it. You also can put it in a normal atx case, or in my instance, I have it in a 4u rack mount.
Although I'd like to have a Z840 or a G5 but I'm still loving my Z440. I just need to stop being lazy and add some more ram
I got a Z840 running dual E5-2667v4s and 128gb of ram (8x16gb) working as my first NAS and occasional cloud server although the second part has a WIP. It will probably end up as an off site backup server when I eventually get a rack setup.
@@Saphykitten I rehomed a Z420 motherboard a few years ago and would not recommend. While the form factor is standard ATX, there's a lot of proprietary headers on the board that require hacky workarounds. From memory, there's a PSU adapter needed, fan and power switch headers are nonstandard, and there's a proprietary temperature sensor that the BIOS will complain about if absent.
I have both the Z440 and the G4 Z4 which is the next newest one. Both are fantastic. I installed some highish end nvidia cards. They game pretty well at 1080.
Its hard to beat for $350.
You really do get bang for your buck if you're willing to deal with proprietary this and that, although getting into an actual 'server' class system for less than 200 bucks, with a little fooling around and some minor upgrades - even free if you're lucky, this thing really could spice up your network pretty impressively. Good call on this one!
Nice to see a video on these machines. I run a P500 with 7 drives on unraid and its amazing!
i'm currently in the process of getting a P720 ready for a proxmox virtualization server. 4x40TB WD RED, 256Gb DDR4 REG ECC 2600Mhz, 12x4TB 2,5' WD Red via 2x SAS Controller and Adaptors for 6x2,5 in 5,25' Bay, 2x Xeon 6138 (each 20c/40t), Nvidia Quadro K4200 for Jellyfin HD/4K Encoding, and 2x 4TB M.2 NVME in Raid0 for the OS and Storage of Images.
All 3.5”?
@@zeroturn7091 yeah all 3.5 the p500 I got had 4 drives internal then I used a 2 5 1/4 to 3 3.5 drive dock in the front
I got one in April. I'm using mine as a budget gaming pc paired with an RX 6700XT.
It's an amazing value. I love it.
Thanks. Nice cheap server.
WOAH! More than just the standard "Thanks." 😂
Yooo Hardware Haven, I bought a ThinkStation P510 for my home server last year! It seemed like the cheapest way to get everything I wanted for my homelab. It was cheap and easy to add a lot of upgrades, and it has been a reliable and powerful beast of a home server that I've been very happy with. Power usage on mine is higher than I wish it was, but then again I've got two GPUs, four hard drives, an upgraded Xeon with way more cores than I actually need, and a ton of cards in it so that might be on me. I think this is an excellent way to go for a home server!
350 aud at time of release
4 day update: now they cost anywhere between 350 AUD and 470 AUD
I have a 48core P920 as my shop sever, got it renewed from Amazon a couple years ago, and it far exceeded my expectations...
Yeah baby! P520!
*beams at mine over there, which is also used as a gaming PC for my kid, sporting a 2135, 32gbs ram, a couple M.2's and an ARC750)
Now go look at a PowerEdge T110-II! My old standby main server!
I'm interested in something like this. How did you power the ARC750?
@@armandourbina3986
I have two 6+2 pin connector cables attached to the mobo, with it connected 1x8 & 1x6.
I have yet to get Resizable Bar working but even without it the setup is wonderful for gaming.
Machines like this get a lot of grief from people ( who have never owned one). I have one with a 2245 8 core processor, 64 gigs of quad channel DDR4 and a 3060 TI video card. It's got a couple of m.2 slots. It's a solid machine. Built like a tank and probably the most stable computer I've ever had so far
I bought one of these over a year ago for about $180 without hard drive and graphics card. Installed a 1tb nvme and a 2070 and use it as my main driver for IT and Photography. Best purchase i made for that year
16:10 You need a CPU which has an integrated GPU to see the video. And even then, it needs to be plugged in to a monitor or use a dongle that fakes it.
I have a p520 myself, and I use it as a workstation. I didn't realize it uses bifurcation as well. Mine came with a 512gb ssd and 64GB of ram. I added an AMD RX 6600, a 4TB nvme, and I added a wifi 6 card. I love this computer. It's not super fast, but it does everything I like to do.
Great video. About 4 months ago I bought a dell Precision 5820, easily the greatest computer purchase of my life. It was $650 AUD with 128gb of ram, an nvidia p1000 and the model up from the chip in this video the w-2145 which is an 8 core 16 thread cpu. If anyone is in the market for a home server these types of machines are incredible. My unit didn't come with an extra pci power adapter, so I picked one up for 20 bucks to run a 1070
Channel is growing fast. That's good cuz you have good content
Dang, I've been using an old Dell Intel 4th gen sff office pc as a NAS for a couple years and this seems like it might be worth the upgrade, currently i'm limited on drive space, sata ports, and overall function (I crammed 2 3.5 hdd but the top won't fit back on so i'm hotrodding it atm 😅) This would def handle most if not all of the future projects I may want to do (currently only running Plex and Home assistant but would love to get into more things like game server hosting and stuff.
I looooooooove seeing your content man it's always so simple and you are always humble when explaining things you are not an expert in, I have started my homelab journey recently after starting watching your content so really really appreciate it so much and keeeeep up the very astonishing work 😊
Maybe your 10Gtech SFP+ card prevented C6 CPU idle state?
Try without it?
Check out Wolfgang's videos on forcing cards to support PCIe sleep, or whatever. I've not tried that yet. Easier to remove the card and measure.
I picked up a cheap Lenovo P700 with dual(!) Xeon E5-2620v3 and a Quadro K2000. Threw in 16GB RAM, 5x8TB HDDs in RAID5 and 2x500GB SSD in RAID1 for OS. Ran up Proxmox VE, and Plex container plus lots of other containers, and use it as a general file server. It's a beast for the price I paid.
I have a Brickstation P520 myself, it is a serious machine that I generally use for gaming and A/V rendering, or writing silly comments on RUclips. You could use the P520 as home server but its primary design is a workstation, it may not have some features that server systems would have. Lenovo's ThinkSystem machines are server-grade models and might be more suitable. Also, I did some measurements and found that the P520 could potentially accept consumer hardware. The case has punch-outs where a standard PSU could mount, and the motherboard could accommodate a standard mATX or ATX board. However, the case only provides about 110mm of clearance for a CPU cooler, and the front panel uses a proprietary edge connector that would need to be removed and replaced with a new power switch.
Glad to see you have the sponsorship from UGreen! But I must say that within my many purchases from them, I had one issue with their Mac dock/ usb converter which burnt my ex-fiancé’s MacBook Pro…😢
a main aspect of a server is its power consumption, consider that too
He talked about it and showed the power consumption of the cpu on indle
I think only idle, like 31w. But with no gpu, 10gb nic or additional sata ports. I've asked if he did test it with a fully running with component.
We like Lenovo boxes. We have an M93 I7 in the kitchen, a pair of P320 I7 tiny boxes driving the TVs for all viewing and streaming. A p330 tiny with I9 and P1000 for portable theater. Lastly I have a fully loaded T15G laptop. Also a great buy are the used HP Z800 and Z840 workstations.
Picked up a couple used P620 units, which is essentially the threadripper pro variation of this form factor. They are very nice.
There was a dirt cheap ex Stadia Dev p520 on eBay here in the UK back in October and I considered buying it to use as a desktop gaming machine/ workstation but decided to custom build instead. Now that I’m building a home server I am gutted cause what a sick machine that would have been.
Always love to see more people finding more uses for the thinkstation P5xx machines.
So if one of 1TB NVME dies, you have to take all PCI card out to replace? So basically all RAID will be ofline while you tinker with one dead drive.
I've suggested these Xeon W-21xx CPU workstations on your videos before. I bought one myself several months ago. I have an HP Z4 G4. The proprietary junk is a little annoying, but replacement parts are dirt cheap on Ebay if you need them. Proprietary workstation/server equipment is way cheaper on the used market than standard stuff, so if you want budget options with a lot of features, that's the best way to go. I bought it for something cheap with a lot of PCIe lanes and high maximum RAM capacity.
As far as proprietary stuff goes, I'd take Lenovo over HP or Dell any day.
@@nootnewt I prefer the PCIe slot layout on the HP Z4 G4. It goes empty slot, x16, x4, x16, x4, x8. That lets me put two x16/x8 cards and an x8 card in with each card having free space between them for airflow. The Lenovo has the x8 slot is right above the first x16 and thus has less airflow for that one slot. If I remember correctly, the Dell model has the same PCIe slot issue and a more cramped chassis. Most x8 cards I'd look at like NICs and SAS adapters need a lot of airflow and having it that tight in there makes them harder to cool adequately without getting very loud.
The extra drive bay is pretty cheap from lenovo. It also ships with a power adapter to power 4 drives instead of the standard 2.
Great review video. In the future could you include a few more power numbers along side the testing, it would help those concerned about the cost of power verses performance verses use case verses setup cost. TY
PCIe lanes and remote access is everything I want in a system, especially if it is used as a server.
The closest thing to the Thing Station is technically a used AMD TR or lower class, which are still very expensive.
Or the way around ASrock's rack motherboards for AM4/5, which are also expensive but only have a maximum of 24 consumer PCIe lanes.
How loud are these systems? Both at idle and under load. Compared to a regular workstation.
You inspired me to have a search for something similar after watching this. I'd wanted a workstation platform for a while, but could never seem to find what I wanted, or could afford. After searching a little for P520's, there wasn't a lot in Australia, and they usually had the W2135 or the W2123 CPU. With the help of a certain LLM, I found out the competitors from the other brands, and then found an HP Z4 G4 with a W-2145 for reasonable money ($285USD)
I plan of definitely moving the portainer setup from my old 7th gen Intel NUC i5 to this new server, as a VM in proxmox. The only thing I'm still trying to decide, is if it's worth moving my OPNSense box to this also, and then the NAS as well, and combine all 3 of my current systems into the one. I'm fairly certain that it will have more than enough power to do what I want, and I'm sure that one system would use much less power than 3.
This seems like a good system to invest into as I begin my journey into building a home server that has the potential to grow with me. Thanks for doing the homework and providing all this great information. There's a lot of flexibility and features packed into that box!
It's possible that the screws on the heat sink are JIS instead of Phillips. That may be why you had issues with a Phillips bit fitting.
You should take a look at the dell precision T7600/T7610. It’s an older workstation but still pretty usable and affordable. It can go up to 512gb ddr3 ram, I believe it can support up to 40tb of hdds. And can have as many as 3gpus installed at once as it has a 1,300 watt psu.
I remember when epyc rome cpus were affordable. Getting last year a low power EPYC 7D12 including board on the cheap was the best decision for me.
7D12 epyc . . . cool 👍
Dell an HP also have some pretty good refurbished/second hand offerings of the same generation (Dell T5820/HP G4 Z4) that you can find for around the same price. I have the slightly older T5810 and after throwing in some more ram and upgrading the CPU it served me well as a Proxmox server until I upgraded to Epyc Rome.
If your budget stretches a little farther there are also Epyc Naples cpu/motherboard/ram combos all over eBay for pretty decent prices and you avoid the proprietary nonsense (but it's not a complete system).
got a load of these to be scraped, we all in IT took one & saved a few for parts. Powersupply can be bit doggy as we had to swap out 2 of them after they blew. Otherwise they have been class for us learning how to work with VM's. Would like some more Sata ports on the board but sure it was free.
I just bought a P720 with a pair of 6138s, 128GB RAM and a RTX3090 a month ago and it still has 10 months of warranty.
Subbed to the channel because I am thinking of making a truenas server to do some stuff with zfs and maybe something crazy with intel optane and cacheing. With all the options for pcie lanes, this seems like a mich better platform to learn on for me and means I can leave my omv server running on the x570 board I have. Appreciate all the content and hope to learn more.
The Dell Precision workstation 5520s are all over ebay too and simular to this. Lots of tooless easy expansions, etc.. I tested one with a Kil-a-watt and it hovered around 70 to 90 watts at idle on a windows 11 login in screen with one nvme boot drive and two spinning disks.
With PCIe bifurcation you can have TONS of NICs for DIY mega-router...
Solid deal at that price - the case alone would have fetched that price 5 years ago. I i feel that with advent of Z690-Z790 or AMD4 or AMD5, these will drop in price even more.
Thank you for this video. It's a very nice system even today.
got Dell Precision T7820 for 358 eur, 4 bays, but only 16 gigs, planned to upgrade later with another 128 gigs or so. had to pay duties form UK to eu tho, which was another 100 i guess. still not bad for what it is. Love the build, expandability, seems future proof to me.
I found out that proxmox somehow makes pretty high idle power draw. When i installed pop_os i got 10 watt less in idle. Maybe bc proxmox is using relatively old kernel? I don't know. Try to boot different os from the usb stick and see if it changes anything.
I got one of these and I liked that much that I got a second one. One is my home server with proxmox, virtualized truenas and many other VMs like my development server, pre production server. I have it with 64gb of ram and haven’t had any issues. The second one is for gaming and it works amazing with a 3070
thats my major gripe with desktop workstations from Dell, Lenovo, HP. It only has space for 2 3.5" drives from the get go with xtra useless space. too bad cant have room for maybe 6 drives not including ssd's or m.2 going off an adapter
Fan noise level if any?
15:48 -- Intel AMT got patched for CVE-2017-5689 per SA-00075.
Great video overall, once again 👍
Your b-roll closeups are tack sharp; shining the system was worth!
Kindest regards, neighbours and friends.
It does seem like a pretty versatile system. The real heart breaker for me is the power supply. I can live with proprietary for a lot of things but power supplies make it really difficult in my experience. That said it might well be a system worth checking out regardless. Thank you for the accessible content as always!
140w is a monstrous consumption for a home server
I had one, the mobo died, the energy usage kept me from replacing it
The main reason the expansion bays are not found anywhere is because since these are enterprise-class machines, most businesses had server storage, and didnt need their users to have tons of local storage.
If you like street running, Gennesee and Wyoming has quite a bit of it in Columbus, Georgia on their Columbus & Chattahoochee Railroad
Good to know that it can do headless mode without GPU. AMT seems to be useful.
Biggest issue: limited chassis space for modern GPU, proprietary motherboard and PSU. PSU too weak for dual GPU (some user reported instability when using dual 3090 or even dual 300W TDP Quadro card ), and no upgrade path.
Why would u even want to put that in this low end system?
I've got something similar and it works great for running truenas. Dell precision T3600, I've definitely gotta get creative sometimes because of the proprietary stuff but for a $20 marketplace find I was on cloud nine. 😂 Great vid!
I bought one of these late last year, and it's been a solid virtualization server. Calling this thing a workstation doesn't do it justice at all.
I used one of these for my first home lab! Was super great to break into the space.
Until I needed a motherboard replacement and a PSU replacement 😂
Only thing missing is fans for the HDD. I need good cooling if it is intended to be a NAS, but I don't think I see any.
I have been screaming about this thing since I got one like 2 years ago for ~$200 on ebay. The P520c would make a better workstation though b/c is also just as cheap, can do many of the same things and fit 2 GPUs.
Re: NVMe tests: A single NVMe drive outperforming RAID zfs between 4 drives bifurcated actually somewhat makes sense. You are r/wing to 4 different drives vs one. This is also a good way to wear out your drives fairly faster. I feel as though using them separately via passthrough is a better use case.
Looks like a cool machine except for the terrible airflow over the 3.5" drives, which isn't great if you want to put used data center drives in it.
imo the hardest part abt a home server isn’t really about the computer parts but the case itself. it’s hard to find an affordable one with multiple hdd bays (non-itx)
I'm getting a ZimaCube Pro Personal Cloud - RAM Upgrade (1235U/64G/256G) in the next couple days and I've really found your videos useful. I'm going to use it for a home web app server, and I'm looking for a video you've possibly done on that, or perhaps a new idea :) Thanks for everything!
Why not run an Intel Arc GPU for video encoding and decoding? Should be doable since there are 75W available via the PCI slots. Maybe not an 770, but perhaps the 300 series
15:40 - do you have a link to that Icydock drive cage?
ZFS is a COW (Copy on Write), it is doing a validation before committing the write
13:41 if you run a raid 1 with that many drives you may get better performance. i run my prox os drives in 1-0. when i get more nvme drives i’ll change that.
I have a P520 as my work computer. Solid machine!