Yep, was surprised to see that 2x2680v4 is lower power consumption than the previous 2x2630v3 that I had, despite nearly doubled the cores.
Phynness
I have two 2680v4 with 160GB of RAM, 1 SSD, and 12 HDDs (4 SAS, 8 SATA), and a Quaddro P5000. Average consumption over the last week is 220W (about 25 docker containers that run plex-related stuff 24/7, and a handful of self hosted things). Min consumption (roughly idle, I assume) is 164W. Power is cheap where I live, <12¢ per kWh.
You could cut power consumption down by removing a CPU or consolidating your storage to fewer drives (or going with SSDs if thats in the budget).
Serverpartdeals has an 18TB for $165 right now. That's would I would get. In fact, I've bought 6 of them in the last couple months.
sighs
Dell EXOs are Seagate drives with a firmware that is certified to work on Dell servers. But they will work on other systems just fine.
Yeah, I switched a while ago prefer it.
Yeah, I guess technically what I've heard is some form of 'lower binned drives usually end up going to the external drive market, while the ones that QC test better end up under the enterprise label.'
They have 18TB Exos for $165 USD right now.
I have four 2TB drives in a software RAID0 in my gaming rig. They were manufactured in 2011.
Get it and then go buy the v4 chips that u/karmaawhoree has for sale over on r/homelabsales.