Best [quiet] home servers for the money

Jason

Since we had the topic for the HP DL360 G5.

What's the best sub $200 server/workstation we can buy (rackmount or tower) that's around the same price and isn't too loud to run in a rack or a room at home?

Virtulazation support is a must (most likely hyper-v again).

scottalanmiller

If money was no object, a Dell VRTX would be awesome. They are like silent.

scottalanmiller

For that price range your options are very limited. I'm not sure that I've seen any server-class devices that were that quiet. Beefy workstations might be the best bet.

coliver

I run a white box AMD server. I built it with the requirement that it had to be next to or completely silent. I generally don't mind a loud computer but this was going to be running 24x7. It was ~190$ for the processor, motherboard, RAM and case. Then probably another $150-200 for the drives

Jason

I'm thinking some of those cheap "rackable systems" servers on ebay should be easy to make quiet.. the 2U ones.

I had an HP z800 but I sold it and I don't want to spend that much just for a server.

coliver

@Jason said:

I'm thinking some of those cheap "rackable systems" servers on ebay should be easy to make quiet.. the 2U ones.

I had an HP z800 but I sold it and I don't want to spend that much just for a server.

The next server I get will be rackable with an enterprise level RAID card. I'm hoping the next house has a convenient closet that I can turn into a wiring plant/server closet.

Jason

@coliver said:

@Jason said:

I'm thinking some of those cheap "rackable systems" servers on ebay should be easy to make quiet.. the 2U ones.

I had an HP z800 but I sold it and I don't want to spend that much just for a server.

The next server I get will be rackable with an enterprise level RAID card. I'm hoping the next house has a convenient closet that I can turn into a wiring plant/server closet.

My house does but I still don't want it loud.

MattSpeller

If you want quiet & server to be in the same sentence look at getting a 3/4/5U monster. They don't typically use any 40mm fans except the power supplies. This makes it cheap & easy to make them super quiet.

MattSpeller

@coliver said:

I run a white box AMD server. I built it with the requirement that it had to be next to or completely silent. I generally don't mind a loud computer but this was going to be running 24x7. It was ~190$ for the processor, motherboard, RAM and case. Then probably another $150-200 for the drives

If you want near silent, do the above.

coliver

@MattSpeller said:

@coliver said:

I run a white box AMD server. I built it with the requirement that it had to be next to or completely silent. I generally don't mind a loud computer but this was going to be running 24x7. It was ~190$ for the processor, motherboard, RAM and case. Then probably another $150-200 for the drives

If you want near silent, do the above.

I would probably do it again. Except I would get a motherboard and processor that supported more then 16GB of RAM. That is the only bottleneck I am running into right now.