Microserver Gen8 CPU and Memory Upgrade

[@charlesjmouse]

I know, a comment on an older video. But a very good video! Some further info for any looking for ideas: MyGen8 has been running an E3-1240v2 for some years without any issues - 69w! I had wedged an old PCI slot blower between the heatsink and the back panel over my cooling concerns - very good temps indeed reported by ESXi, and rock-solid... ...said ancient PCI-slot blower gave up the ghost about the same time I put a Tesla P4 in my system (with a 40x50x10mm blower carefully super-glued on the end. Out annoyance I put the whole thing back together without the extra fan on the passive CPU cooler and much to my surprise the temps are still excellent - up to 45c! I suspect helped by the intake of blower on the end of the Tesla card drawing it's air across the CPU heatsink along with the bog old fan on the back of the system. Very happy, no issues. I guess HP built a fair bit if headroom in to the cooling solution. PS: Why an E3-1240v2? At the time I did the upgrade this family of CPU's were still going for a bit of money and the negligible step down from the fastest offering or a similar performing 45w chip chopped a really big lump off the cost. As a bonus the server's VGA port still works in spite of this supposedly being a IGP-less CPU. Given low prices today I'd just buy the best CPU I could find. I hope that's of help to someone.

[@FlatulentCurtains]

To set your mind at rest, I've found the standard cooling in the Gen8 is really capable. I've been running the E3-1230 v2 since 2015 without encountering any issues and I run test labs with multiple VMs. I'm not deliberately pushing the CPU hard, but it deals with fairly busy workloads no problem.

[@techtriedandtested]

So far so good. Even under load I've seen the cpu temps only reaching 40 degrees c

[@Revivify]

Nicely detailed video, always been tempted to pick up one of these Microservers.

[@techtriedandtested]

It's worth giving it a try. Even with the Celeron CPU it made a great little file server

[@ghodkiller0000]

Thank you for this video, I have such a machine using it for home storage and I was thinking of upgrading it, you saved me a lot of research.

[@thedon1004]

Really good video. Clear, nicely paced. A+

[@woughtanker3240]

Hi - I have upgraded the processor and added 4x 2" fans in a push pull setup across the heatsink connected to a thermal controller so that when the temperature rises above whatever I set it to, the fans power on and bring the temperature down but I'm struggling to find the mini molex to SATA power connector. Can you let me know where it came from please

[@kev2020-z9s]

The best thing I have found is put the motherboard in not full home and put the front cable in the side motherboard fully home make life easier.

[@TheTimeProphet]

I also am running the Microserver Gen8. I only got 8Gb of RAM in mine, but I do not recognise your dashboard. I have ESXI Vsphere installed on my machine, so that I can run multiple VMs. The dashboard I have is the ILO one, and the ESXI dashboard. What is the max RAM it can handle. I am thinking of upgrading my ram. I got a total of 20Tb of hard drive space.

[@n0ex]

you showing 1 smaller SSD then a second samsung ssd you installed at the DVD drive, where is the first ssd connected?

[@jocelynmedina906]

Volumes kinda low , but great idea nonetheless

[@techtriedandtested]

Hi, I appreciate the feedback. Hoping to buy better audio gear in the next month or so.

[@thonair]

I have a question, i'm about to get the same server for my homelab, is it possible to swap that heatsink for a cpu heatsink like the one given by amd with the fan, is there an additional fan port ?

[@kev2020-z9s]

I'm running a Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-3470T CPU @ 2.90GHz 35w all good.

[@johnnguyen-xt9nd]

How did you get it to boot? I installed Truenas on my Gen8 by usb stick on the motherboard, but after installation it won’t boot into Truenas OS but instead keeps cycling back into the hp start screen over and over again. What am I doing wrong?

[@ronan4681]

I have 5 of these servers all upgraded to xeons. They where decommissioned around 4 years ago and sat in my garage. 6 months ago I had the same idea as you of converting them to truenas servers. One by one I tested them and they had the same hardware error (with nand flash from memory). Sad, they where Google machines

[@daz7748]

Can you elaborate that? What kind of error are you talking about?

[@simuman]

Hi, could you provide link to the mini molex to sata cable you used as having trouble sourcing one, tia.

[@techtriedandtested]

Try this - www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B018NKPUIA/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&th=1

[@techtriedandtested]

Or search DeLOCK Cable Power SATA 15 Pin Male to Floppy 4

[@magesnz]

Where did you get the mini molex to sata adapter I’m having a hard time finding them online

[@techtriedandtested]

Try searching Amazon for DeLOCK Cable Power SATA 15 Pin Male to Floppy 4

[@salamdamai]

What is your idle power consumpti0on?

[@christopherjames9843]

Any fan headers on the board?

[@luckyz0r]

Any issues without using an LSA pce for the disks in TrueNas? I'm willing to install TrueNAS Scale thought.

[@coatezy]

He is only running three 4TB HDD so will likely have the boot SSD in the remaining caddy which allows him to boot from it without a flash drive with GRUB or an LSA controller setup.

[@petekeightley2973]

Currently i have a ssd with usb to sata connecter, I've been trying months to get my server running from that extra sata port with ssd. How did you do it? I have the molex connector. I'm also using Truenas. I've got 4x 4TB WD Red drives in raid 5. I have the i3-3240 cpu.

[@coatezy]

He is only running three 4TB HDD so will likely have the boot SSD in the remaining caddy which allows him to boot from it without a flash drive with GRUB or an LSA controller setup.

[@Twist3rke]

Hi​ @techtriedandtested ! What type(brand, MHz, voltage, etc.) of memory did you use?

[@techtriedandtested]

Timetec Hynix IC 8GB DDR3L 1600MHz PC3-12800 Unbuffered ECC 1.35V CL11 2Rx8 Dual Rank 240 Pin

[@informaticomega]

@@techtriedandtestedlink?

[@islamaiman6528]

hi guys =D I am about to buy the Gen8 to be my main plex server is it good? I don't understand so much about computers so I really don't know if these numbers will make my streaming ( one device or 2 maximum ) smooth I have 4 harddisks (3TB X4 ) loaded with blue ray movies and 1080

[@MartinMurray1966]

If your wanting to use them for transcoding movies on the go, then it might struggle. If you set it to let the device watching the stream transcode it that should let it run better. I use two of these Microservers for plex, but they only are used as Nas servers. My plex server is on another computer, which has 16gb of ram and can transcode everything itself.

[@islamaiman6528]

man that was 10 mothes ago =D ... i got my self a dell server =D i got 4 of them now XD but thanks or taking time to anser me @@MartinMurray1966

[@Danileinzkull]

Easier than change the thermal paste in my xbox one