Maximum ghetto home server
Specs are slightly in flux right now, but basically it's an HP ML310e Gen 8, with a random HDD cage on top for 4 additional drives, and a bunch of fans zip tied to the front to cool the 6 internal drives. Oh, and a little 7" display stuck to the side which I'll get a stats readout on soon.
Xeon E3-1220 v3, 32GB ECC RAM, 40TB array, Quadro M2000.
It's running Unraid and I use it as a media server (Plex, Sonarr, Radarr) as well as a backup for my music and video production, and general stuff (NextCloud, Photoprism).
The machine itself is so stupid and hacked together, built entirely from used parts I got cheap on ebay. It's probably cost me £300 max, all in.
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High quality zip ties with a reasonable amount of the machine actually inside the case. I would say this is above average.
Right? The zip ties even have trimmed tails!
If it’s stupid but it works, it’s not stupid.
Beautiful. Very respectful fan job. That said, there's not enough cardboard in your setup. Here's inspiration:
LOL, it has a case. How is that ghetto?
Well... Most of it has a case.
Doesn’t even have an external psu? Not ghetto enough…
If it works, is safe, and is maintainable, there’s no shame in it. My unraid box has some unorthodox drive mounting too.
You had me with "Specs are slightly in flux right now". Beautiful.
I have those same drive cages sitting in my spare parts closet lol. You can jam it into 3x 5.25” bays sideways!
How is the display connected?
Double sided tape
You know it. The second best way to make things attach to things after zip ties.
Nice. A Thermaltake CoreV21 has a LOT of space inside for drives amd other hacks
I might move my server to my CoreV21 at the end of the year when I upgrade my desktop. Love the case but it's a bit large ot have on top of my desk.
It is huge. it fills the full volume of an Ikea Kallax opening, I have mine hanging out so wires in back against the wall have some room...plus some airflow. if the Kallax wasn't against a wall it would slide back all the way. It has plastic feed about 12-15 mm tall (I think) feet are about 3mm too tall so I trimmed them. But on thingverse somebody made a 3d printer model for replacing them.
I know lol, I went from a little baby Silverstone itx case to this monstrosity. I love the modularity of it but it's just so big. I don't think I'll go back to itx, it's honesly a fucking pain, but I'm probably getting a slimmer case.
❤️
This is not remotely ghetto, this is really well done. Sure the fans are a bit wonky but that is one hell of a machine for the money.
Well done!
Thanks very much! Yeah it's kind of endearingly ghetto, but I'm really happy with it.
Does anyone have tips on how to source large capacity hard drives on the cheap? I was a silly and didn't set my storage to be redundant and I'm trying to rectify that.
I've bought about 600tb from server part deals.
Just got 20tb drives for about 250ish. Higher than what I wanted to pay, however $12.5/TB is good enough for me.
I've found used SAS drives really cheap. Averaged around £6 per tb.
Really now? Whereabouts are you looking for deals like that? Are there any limitations concerning sas drives, other than the different connection? Can they be pooled with SATA drives?
I should probably google all of this haha
I just grab them off ebay. SAS drives are almost exclusively used in enterprise servers, so there's fuck all demand for them on the used market. Buy a cheap PCIe SAS controller card and you're good to go.
I use Unraid which doesn't care at all about what types of drives you use, so you can mix and match into one huge array. I have 8x SAS and 2x SATA drives in one array.
That's a lot of good information, thank you!
I'm new to this and I was curious, what's the screen on the side? Like, what's it showing and what are you using to do so?
My server is literally a laptop from 2010 running Ubuntu server with some external hard drives and an old cooling pad.
I mainly installed the screen as an easy way to see what's happening during boot, so I don't have to lug the server into the other room and connect it to a monitor when I make changes to things. I'm planning on setting up a stats readout so it's useful the rest of the time - things like network status/traffic, disk/cpu utilisation etc.
Untill I read the specs I though you might have built a custom router in there as well with the antennas
I literally just bought a monitor just like this. It just arrived. It's still in the packaging.
I had my Linux install die on me (due to my own stupidity, but I recovered it), and I needed to move my monitor from my gaming PC into the closet where my server lives. This isn't the first time I've had to do something like that, and I was over it. So mini monitor for $40 it is!
How is that ghetto lol. Now, I’d understand if you were like me with a crusty ass laptop in the corner of my room 2500km away from me, running some Linux and 4 external hard drives, but Xeon and ghetto?