I have this T330 that is my main stable currently. I actually got it for free and it replaced my Dell T30. It was a very small upgrade but had a little better CPU and drives were easier to manage. There are things you can do to fix the fan but requires command line. I run Plex but I never really had reasons to transcode too much but I am not a tv junky and it runs well enough for my needs. I use unraid and the ability to add and remove drives is awesome. The big goal for my main was always low power and that ticks the box in a big way. I think for what you get with a computer that is designed to be up 24/7 it is a solid choice.

TOO BIG, TOO OLD, TOO HEAVY. Better to leave it for old timers and really go for at least 3 generation forward!

Why are all of these videos tech focused and don’t cover how people might actually use it? This video is not helpful.

Interesting, the cpu on it is a little less computer power than the 5600H in my laptop but the expandability, etc, for the prices you get on ebay - not terrible. I think id still pay a little more get a modern CPU that doesnt use so many watts

Quick question, at the end, on truenas, you have 4 hdd and 2 nvme for data?

You should make a follow up video where you try to install a boot loader onto a pair of high-endurance SD cards in the Dual SD module and then configure the boot loader to load an OS installation on an NVMe drive.

You might be able to replace iDRAC with Dell Open Server Manager (Which is just OpenBMC) but i'm not sure 100%.

You can use "Clover boot" on a usb key to boot from an Nvme SSD on older systems. It's pretty neat and works really well

Does it support ReBAR for adding an Intel Arc GPU? If it does, seems like a good option for a video recording machine.

The T330 is a great machine, I run 3 of them for varying use cases. Proxmox via SSD, VMs on a PCI SSD, 10G NIC, Graphics Card with onboard storage. While I haven’t changed the CPU fan I did implement a GitHub project that allows you to manually configure the fan profiles to help reduce the noises in a cool environment.

Maybe the video would be util if you show a performance test, and play more than 10 seconds on screen, to know what components are actually necessary

PC ready to take Off Sir Engage Main Drive

After the video about the HP Z440 which I use as my 24/7 Unraid Server, this is the second video about a Server the that I also use in my homelab. Except I have the bigger brother - T430. I've got trueNAS running, put some 3x 2,5" Bays in the 5,25 Slots and I use this this Server as my Backup-Server. I also think these PowerEdge T Series Servers are great for a homelab. Mine has 2x Xeon E5-2667 v4 CPUs and 256 GB RAM. And I changed the back fan with a Noctua Industrial, so it is much quieter now. And when I was running proxmox on it, I had no issues passing through the HBA Card. Great Video

I just picked up my T440 yesterday. It's in brand new condition. I got two Silver 4110 xeons and 256Gb of RAM, 6x 4tb HDDs, 2x .9 tb SSD. All SAS. Plus a dual 10GB ethernet card. perc h330 raid card. The whole thing cost me less than a RTX 3070.

You got the repurposed BTX version of that SKU, which lacks functionality compared to the real ATX version of it. I would also open the back of those x1 slots carefully.

if ATX of this shell not proprietary ,just ditch this dell motherboard and replace a feature newer motherboard in this case will be fantastic. although the price might not looking good though

You can use a NVME but you have to set the boot partition on an USB key, on servers there should be usb slots directly on the motherboard. This is what I did for my NAS.

Thanks for that fan sound that very loud 😂

I’m in the video 5 seconds and love it already for how relatable it is! Love this!

If this T330 is anything like my R730, then you can indeed boot from an NVME. The way I found was using clover on a bootable USB drive that just stays permanently attached to the internal USB slot on the MB. Kind of ghetto but gets the job done lol. Thankfully mine does support bifurcation so I ended up using a 2 drive PCIE adapter like you did before. This is a fun video!

if you want to have a good laugh, look at the benchmarks between this xeon and the i3-N305...it's crazy how fast and efficient modern computing has become.

7:34 is what my laptop sounds like when i start up minecraft(intel igpu)

Think you should have stuck to the HP mini server you intended looking for, only personal preferance due to size

PERC was already in IT Mode in that thing? If you don't know what that phrase means, do not try and use this for TRUENAS, or you're going to have a bad time at some point in the future.

Could have done a chainboot instead. Boot from an SD card with a minimal GRUB/GRUB2/G4D and then chainboot the NVMe next. Also, even if you don't have bifurcation, you can still use NVMe adapters that have built in PCIe switches. Some even come with a RAID BIOS, which if it loads up at POST time, should allow booting via the BIOS (assuming the BIOS accepts the RAID BIOS as a boot source and not just another accessory device)

I will really like to see an HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10 server on your channel. Some good upgrades avalibel this and lost cost.

Can i ask why on earth we need trascoding in 2025 when even a 100 euros phone can do it on fly

to run off pci slot install clover on a USB. I have done it on T430 and a R730 with no issues.

I picked up one of these real cheap. Great home server built llike a tank. 40gb ram, 4x 4tb dell drives, enterprise idrac license, the only issue i have is the h730 raid controller card. I'm going to replace it with the h330 with it mode flashed so I can run proxmox and truenas

8 front bays for 250? Okay, we are starting out REALLY good JBOD cases are absurdly expensive. ...only 4 caddies included, it's getting worse, these things can easily cost 10-20 bucks each. That's why I did not think long before buying the 12 caddy 12 bay server for 430. (it also has 4 10gig ethernet)

Regarding having the redundant power supplies - in the BIOS you usually have multiple options - Have both running (shares the load, more efficient on servers under constant heavy loads, less risk if one of the PSU's fails), Having one selected on startup (the other one to whichever you last used, helpful if you turn it on and off alot), and One live with the other redundant (the second PSU is connected but does nothing unless the primary fails - and the other other should kick in if the primary fails, saves on wear on the PSU but is slightly more risky since it relies on the redundant PSU kicking in)

Regarding the DELL server - I've also got a HP DL380 (gen7) and having the power on the SAS backplane is a very common thing since the 'SAS' standard has the connector as one complete unit - it looks the same as a SATA drive but instead of two cables, it's one single connector so you can't physically attach SATA cables to a SAS drive.

HP gen8 are good for home server, and the remote management is free

Oooooh Gen7 HP microserver mentioned - I've got a rather modded one next to me in my study (Borg cube wrap on it, 16Gb of ram, PCIe extender cable so I can use PCIe x16 cards in the x4 slot, and a P212 raid card so I can use SAS drives with it - I've got 4x 6Tb SAS drives for alllllll the longevity and OMV7 running it all).

you can get extended (240 days) iDrac trial licenses - just google dell-idrac-enterprise-7-8-and-9-extended-trial-license

The problem I would have with this build is the weak CPU for transfering over ssh tunnel since thats how i wrap all connections. you could get someting like the best skylake i7 off ebay for 40-50$ and a motherboard for it for same price. 3.11 times faster than single core and 8 times faster overall

Done similar with a HP ML350P GEN8. Was lovely until I added a gpu for transcoding which upped the fan speed. Luckily it's stored out the way.

iDrac license - Ebay, very cheap

Still have a T610 in storage. But don't know what to do with it though. It is neat, but yeah. You need a good usecase, otherwise it just collects dust

RIP Don 🙏

If you install Tailscale on the NAS you have to turnoff Subnet Router or it won’t connect I had this with mines. The only way it will connect is by using the Tailscale ip or DNS given by Tailscale

1:06 Just get the drive bays and 3d print the enclosure. Someone posted it on makerworld of 4-8-16 bays of them. Would make for an excellent video.

Who’s here in 2014?

I’ve been a Dell PE person for a while. A few notes on them: - the lower end units do not support bifurcation, but the higher end ones do. I used r330’s as firewalls and hated that I couldn’t dual NVMe them like I did with my r630’s. - I never bought iDRAC from Dell. I always ebay’d it for 5% of the cost. - you can’t disable the Matrox chip because it acts as the mux switch between the video out on the board and the iDRAC. The board physically lacks the traces to connect to onboard graphics, so if you could disable it, you’d be stuck with a headless system until you hard reset the bios to default. iLO is the same way, as are some SM boards. It’s unfortunately the cost of having a BMC on a Xeon Platform without factoring in a bunch of edge cases that affect a small number of users while easily tripling board complexity. Great video!

I like dell servers I have two, but honestly now that I have some solid experience with them, I think I want to build a custom server next time. With a rack mount case. Bring my own mobo, GPU, raid card etc. I’m getting sorta tired of dells restrictions on a lot of things oriented for enterprise and no real customizability for homelabbers in some areas.

Even the t430 doesn't have bifurcation. For homelab use I think the workstation equivalents are better. T7910 has bifurcation, multi GPU support, can accommodate a tonne of drives and is super quiet. Only downside is there no IDRAC or redundant power supplies.

10:00 it may not boot from pcie but it can boot from USB. I put clover on a USB with a PCIe NVMe driver and it boots just fine. Did this on two machines, one with proxmox and one with windows.

$200 is too expensive for this. I bought a Dell T430 for the same price. Looks very similar but supports 2x xeon e5 v4.

I have almost exactly the same t330. To properly use drives you need to use undocumented flash RAID PERC H730 mini to IT mode - I did for mine and use Proxmox, TrueNas and Jellyfin (with external GPU) without problem. The biggest issue with this server for me is VERY expensive uDIMM RAM

The fan speed sound had me laughing so hard haha