Dell Poweredge server T410, 32GB ram, Intel Xeon E5645 2.13GHz Quad-core No HDD SAS
Going for 50 AUD (32 USD)
For Plex specifically it is a pass. This will have Xeons and Xeons don't support quick sync. You are going to be much better off buying one of those micro desktops from Dell/HP/Lenovo.
I would look at the list of CPUs that support hardware encoding and see if this Xeon is on the list. If it’s not, I would pass on it for a Plex server. It might be good for a NAS, though. It’s a pretty old CPU, but would be perfectly adequate for a NAS/NFS server.
That thing is going to be chugging power. Also note that it uses SAS drives, so you can't just use consumer SATA drives in it. ALSO 410s are from the 2009-2011 era. Do you really want to depend on a 10+ year old PSU? What's the cost going to be for you to find replacement parts?
Too old and power hungry at this point. Plus the raid controllers of that generation only support up to 2tb.
Aim for at least a T320 or R320.
I use my R320 as a Plex server and it's pretty good. Not as power efficient as something newer, but I got it for free, it has lots of RAM so I can run many VMs as well as Plex, and it supports SAS which made getting several inexpensive 8TB drives going in ZFS nice and easy.
I just want to make a small correction for others reading this. The Tx10/Rx10 CAN have a raid controller that doesn't support larger than 2tb drives, specifically any of the PERC 6 lines. If your Tx10/Rx10 has a PERC H200/H700, you don't have that 2tb limitation.
Edit: But yes, too old to be worthwhile for anything.
I believe you still are limited to 512k sector size though.
I mean, it would definitely run it. But so would a raspberry pi 4 as long as your just direct streaming 1080p videos.
Allegedly if I had a homelab, and allegedly had 8x10tb for storage. I would have allegedly used a dell tower server similar to this with 32gb ram and have allegedly had no problems.
Also allegedly I ended up with a second one for the times allegedly I’ve upgraded hard drive size.
sure...
Relative to a laptop or consumer pc this thing will be a power hog
No, just no
Old Hardware, and very power hungry.
Look for desktop systems from main brands like Lenovo, Dell and HP, go for a G5400 or i3 8100 with 16gb of ram. Those are generally limited on hdd space, so if you need more than 2/3 HDDs, it would be better going DIY.
E-waste
That’s e-waste, they’re literally charging you to take it away for them.
Hey OP I got a bunch of other e-waste that you can have, I'll even let you take it away for $500, that's a killer deal!
Hard no.
That machine will cost you more in power than what you could have built a modern server for that will decimate that Dell relic in performance.
For $500 you can build a brand new, complete machine based around a i3 12100.
For comparison, a cheap 12100 has three times the compute power of that Xeon dinosaur, plus hardware transcoding. The 12100 will do 6+ 4K transcodes, that Xeon will do zero.
Yes, $50 up front is cheap. It will cost you far more in the long run while having garbage performance.
Are you seriously comparing something for $30 and something for $500?
Do you have a spec list? Because I have no ability to take what you said and translate it into a working machine, but I do have the ability to order from Amazon or NewEgg and assemble.
I also have two R730s that I'm considering turning into NAS and Plex setups, but I keep reading that I'll be sorry. So...tell me what I want instead.
I agree that using old R730's for Plex or a home server is silly. Getting rid of my HPE DL380 G9 (the HPE equivalent of a Dell R730) was the best thing I ever did.
For low end budget? i3 12100, Gigabyte Gaming X Z690 DDR4 or Aorus Elite DDR4 motherboard, Unraid, 2x8gb DDR4 3600 (I've been using Corsaor LPX for the last dozen+ Unraid builds I've done). Fractal R5 case with a Thermaltake GX2 PSU.
That should land you just a smidge above $500, not inclusive of the Unraid license.
i5 13500 is an excellent upgrade if you are anticipating running compute heavy tasks. Definitely pick up a pair of 1TB NVME to run as wrote cache and storage for your containers (Plex and whatnot).
Sell the R730's. A single 13500 will likely be more powerful than both of them combined, not that you need the power in the first place. If you get lucky you can find some dolt that will pay a premium for them because they think Xeon's are so powerful and cool!
Profit. Literally. You'll make your money back in not paying to power a R730 (or worse, two of them).
I run plex and the full support stack on a dell optiplex 3060, obviously the data is stored elsewhere. Cheap, quiet and can stack them like legos.
Can feed 3 streams simultaneously, haven’t tried it with more.
No. I have a r710 and had to move Plex off of it because it can't transcode real time period. Plex is now in an optiplex with a cheap quadro. Also Dell did a dumb thing where the pcie slots can't handle more than 25 watts, so you can't even add a graphics card.
I think the power draw is going to make this not worth it.
I'm using this exact tower still. I inherited it for free from work. I swapped the CPUs to some lower TDP L5640s and put an H710 in to allow a 6x4TB array and a Quadro P400 for transcode.
It has no problems pushing 4K HDR streams in my house, or several 1080p streams remotely to family and friends.
You can definitely find lower power solutions, but probably not at this price point with the 6 Bay storage included. All things considered it really doesn't draw that much power, but I might be biased with my inexpensive solar electricity.
That's my plan with my T410, the L5640(s), though mine is going to be an occasional use ESXi host for bigger labs than my Gen8 Microserver can handle. Have you got power figures or was that just a guesstimate?
I ran a T610 for a bit, it is not worth the noise and power draw
It's a $50 door stop. Westmere is now 13 years old.
No don't do it
Na mate. Power draw on that is a killer tbh. Grab yourself a cheap NUC with a relatively new intel CPU that supports quicksync and it will be more than enough.
I agree with one of the users. It’s going to use. A bunch of power and its going to be a space heater. You should just get a regular computer. This is a very odd ball thing. But yes it will be able to run plex. But also you can run plex on a ras pi but have it okay via direct play. I don’t use pi. I have. Amd ryzen 7 3700x with 64 gb of ram for my plex served.
No….
Definitely not. You'd have to pay me money to take this trash off your hands.
I'll say it again and again, 7th Gen Intel because the Quicksync does 10bit HEVC decode and encode on the hardware. If you can get better for cheaper sure but i5 7500 or i7 7700 work great. I run that with several hard disks using unRAID and then load Plex Media server as a docker container. Power draw on a setup like that is way less than what you're looking at, op.
Definitely not. You'd have to pay me money to take this trash off your hands.
As others have said. 150 watts at idle is going to add around $30/month to your power bill. A proper NAS is around 30 watts at idle with the drives still spinning. A media server is an investment in convenience. Definitely spend a bit more on the hardware to save over the lifetime of the server.
I use a Dell R210 mk2 with quieter fans. It idles around 15 watts and can handle transcoding tasks when needed.
I also wouldn't recommend Plex. Go with Jellyfin instead. Much less headache.
I use something like this. But I run ESXi on it and Plex is just a VM among several other VMs.
It'll do the job no problem. The power consumption is more than your average little desktop, but it's not horrific. 100-150watts depending on what's going on from what I've read.
I figure mine's actually four PCs in one, so I'm not really worried about it.
You'll get better performance from a 7th Gen core i5 box with about 1/10th the power usage, those go for $80 or so usually.
Doubtful, it’s old and probably doesn’t have the AES instruction set.
If there's a will there's a way, I've gotten a Plex server to work on a raspberry pi and it can transcode two devices at one time, I'm sure it can work on that
Decent plex host, but you'll hear it, and your power bill may sting a little because of it. Also, tanscoding won't be great, consider a GPU if compatible.
And I felt like Fred Sanford for running my r630 and r710...
If you’re willing to double your electricity bill, it’ll be fine.
I use an Intel NUC as my Plex server. I have an 80TB NAS for the storage.
I gave away one of these when my power bill hiked a few years ago. It cost roughly $50-$75 just to run the T510 at the time. It has 128GB DDR3 and 6x1tb HDD.
I switched to 2x NUC with a DIY NAS. Power bill at around $20-30 for 24/7 uptime.
If you need a loud space heater…
issues
1 the raid card it needs to be hba not sure if this server is capable.
2 really old hardware.
A raspberry pi has more computer power
If a Plex server mostly, get an N95 or N100 mini PC. Or really any new-ish NUC or mini PC will do.
Honestly, it’s too old at this point. I recommend saving money for a better server that is more power efficient and has better performance.
NO that generation of CPU is NOT WORTH IT! Generates too much heat, uses too much power. I bought a Dell R720 for $60 about a month ago and it would blow this system out of the water.