Using Server hardware as Primary Workstation

 Sometimes you plan for expansion, other times it is thrust upon you.

The other day my primary workstation just died.  Here is what it was:

• Intel Q6600
• 8GB RAM
• Radeon RX 570
• 5 drives, total of ~8 TB of data

 Not knowing if the problem was the motherboard, processor, or power supply, decided to junk it, pull the drives and video card and go with a new machine.

Now I normally build my workstations, I enjoy it, but since I was caught with a loss of functionality, I wanted to get back up and running quickly I decided to repurpose one of my ESXi Servers, an IBM DX360 M4.  Here is the info about it from Lenovo:

The machine is built with the following:

• E5-2650 (2)
• 32GB of memory

It is it a little overkill, probably, but it is what I have, and there are a couple of advantages:

• When idle, only uses about 100W
• When idle, the fan speed, and noise is relatively low.
• It has 32 cores with Hyperthreading
• It has 32GB, and there are 12 more RAM slots available
• It can handle 250W video cards, so my RX570 will be child's play for it
• With the GPU Tray, I get 2 x16 PCIe slots, for a total of 4 PCIe slots.  Also I get the option of adding a 2nd HDD / SSD into the system.
  

 

But it has a couple of disadvantages: 

• Only has two Drive bays.
• Doesn't have USB3.0
• No sound
  
• Very difficult to find a power cable for PCI-e video card!!

To get it running it needed a couple of things:

• 480GB SSD to boot
• 3TB drive which has my data from old computer
• MSI R7 240, to get a simple video card that can do HDMI
• ASUS Xonar 5.1 Sound card
• Ethernet Cable 
• PS/2 to USB adapter for my keyboard
• PCI-e power cord 
  

 

After about a week, I am pretty happy with this computer.  Pretty quiet, great on productivity, and even without the RX570 installed, works OK with games.

Normally use Shadow.tech for gaming, but once RX570 is up and running, might cancel this service.

Interesting things that I learned

I use a VPN from time to time.  Before when downloading, I wold get from 8.5 to 9.8 MB/s down.  Now I get 10.00 down.  That is because on my MOCA adapter, it has a 100mbit port and OpenVPN is not multi-threaded, so I am saturating the port, and almost a whole core to do VPN traffic.  

There are USB 3.0 cards out there that don't need a SATA / MOLEX connector in order to work like this from Inateck or LTERIVER.  This is important with a server that doesn't have additional power ports available inside of the device.  I am considering an external JBOD chassis from SYBA for adding more drives to the system.