SPCR

Good to see more complete computer products reviewed. I've actually been looking to replace the aging 1.5 TB Buffalo NAS I have.

The Recommendation here is a bit questionable though, the caveat(s) is (are) simply too big. At least HP probably won't use the "seal" in their marketing.

Nice review, but your network speeds seem very low given what you describe of your setup. Not just for the Microserver, but all your tested systems. I've seen much better speeds on much lower end equipment very regularly. A G2020T should be able to saturate even a crappy gbit NIC without breaking a sweat.

I've never used Lan Speed Test before, but a quick iperf test with the slowest machine I have on hand (AMD e-350 @ 800 MHz, realtek NIC) gave me over 800 mbit/sec. I used the gbit switch in a d-link router to eliminate my higher end switch as a factor.

I'd be curious as to what speeds you get with a simple file copy of a single large file. With the above setup, copying a 1.6 GB file gives around 95-100 MB/sec, which is consistent with the 800 mbit/sec from iperf.

Das_Saunamies wrote:The Recommendation here is a bit questionable though, the caveat(s) is (are) simply too big. At least HP probably won't use the "seal" in their marketing.

The noise/fan control issue is the only real negative, and it disappears when RAID is engaged. It's very quiet, I would not have any desire to mod it for more quiet -- its role is a file server so it won't be front/center in any room. If you can live with the built in RAID 0/1, then there's nothing to compete with this box at market prices. The Amazon ad on the last page shows a G2020T base build at $471. It's really tough to do better in a complete 4-bay mini-server.

I'd be curious as to what speeds you get with a simple file copy of a single large file. With the above setup, copying a 1.6 GB file gives around 95-100 MB/sec, which is consistent with the 800 mbit/sec from iperf.

Moving big video files around (2-6gb), I typically get 80~100 MB/s. It's the folders with multiple smaller files that slow the system down -- and the 10x sequential repetition we employed on some LAN speed tests. I recently copied 200GB of photos over the network, most files were 6~20mb, the avg speed seemed to be around 30~40 MB/s.

I looked at getting one of these, but settled on a Gen7 Microserver(N54L). The cost and apparent lack of (official) support for WHS2011 made me go for the older model.

The upside to the Gen8 is that it, if BIOS supports, could be upgraded to an i5-3470T, or with a TDP stretch to 45W, perhaps an i7-3770T. However, I've not yet seen any confirmation that either of these would work.

It's such a big oversight though, but fair enough.

darqsyde wrote:The upside to the Gen8 is that it, if BIOS supports, could be upgraded to an i5-3470T, or with a TDP stretch to 45W, perhaps an i7-3770T. However, I've not yet seen any confirmation that either of these would work.

Not sure if you require it (I would), but the i5-3470T doesn't have ECC.
Anyway, here's a link to some guy swapping in E3 CPUs with success..
and google cache, because link above seems to be broken.
The comments seem to suggest someone tried a non-ECC CPU (i5, but didn't say which), and it didn't work in the Gen8.

I feel your pain with the Matrox graphics. I have a couple of Supermicro servers that I built which also use onboard matrox graphics. I don't believe they actually make a driver for this GPU for anything newer than Vista/2008. I think I got them to install on 2008 R2 using compatibility, but it was very buggy and caused more issues. So I've let it just use the default "Standard VGA" driver which works but doesn't do any GPU acceleration. So dragging windows and scrolling is terrible. At the very lest, being servers, I rarely am sitting at them physically and manage them over RDP. Why this ancient and apparently unsupported GPU is still being used is beyond me.

Why on earth would you try and install Windows 7? That's what Windows Home Server 2011 is for.

-D

Upgrading to the newest version of the BIOS ROM made the machine quieter. (Version 2013.11.09 21 Feb 2014). Courtesy of the "MicroServer Gen8 is noisy" thread linked in the review.
Download link below.

http://h20566.www2.hp.com/portal/site/h ... stem%20ROM

I have 2 Gen7 MicroServers, one of which is just a spare (at less than £100/unit in the UK, this is worth doing, especially as I had to replace the motherboard under warranty for the original unit).

The Gen8 has some nice added features (faster processor, USB3) but it lost some of the features which made the original unit attractive: support for multiple OS, including Win7 and WHS2011, support for ECC and Non-ECC memory, ability to add SSD and optical drives, two PCIe slots (which could be used with a fanless video card, etc), the ability to make the unit reasonably quiet, a tweaked BIOS to enable Sata-II on the optical drive and eSata ports, standard connectors, etc.).

The price has also crept up significantly.

While transcoding may be a bit limited with the Gen7 model (the N54L is OK), the new model won't improve file transfer speed over Ethernet, as a Gen7 already saturates a GigE network, when properly configured (with WHS2011 or Ubuntu server, for instance).

Greetings, I have a question... Can I control the fan speed with a ILO license ?

Best

Nice

One wee omission I happened to notice - the door can in fact be latched - the little blue clip on the right side of the HDD (bottom left corner of this pic):



...can be pushed down to hold the HDD bay door shut. Still the problem with the buttons etc, plus the fact that the latch just isn't that strong, but it's better than nothing .

Greetings from Germany.

I've got some questions regarding the 4PWM -> 6Pin Fan Header "mod".
After reading page 9 of the review I'm a bit confused how to wire my PWM to HP-6-Pin adapter cable.

You can trick the Microserver into "seeing" an ordinary 4-pin PWM fan by connecting the Rotation Detect/Tachometer pin to the ground, and SHORT CIRCUIT THE GROUND pins from the fan connector. See the diagram below.

Short circuit the ground is clear to me, but the part with connecting the Rotation Detect/Tachometer to Ground isn't.
In the diagram mentioned, you can see that the PWM - "RPM Signal" is connected to Onboard Pin 4 - "Rotation Detect" which is inconsistent to the text.

While the diagram seems to be the more logical version I just want to be sure that I don't have to solder it twice.

Another open question is the connector. Have somebody tried to use two of this as the 6Pin connector?


I plan to cut some of the plastic to make it slim enough to fit into the jack.

Something went wrong with images.
It clearly shows the images from different article about Thermaltake heatsink.
Please fix it.