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Advice requested for home lab setup

J

jacqkeen

n00b
Joined
Apr 20, 2011
Messages
12
I am contemplating a home lab for ESXI that will be used for learning and also serving media, files, and hosting backups.

Option 1: a used precision T7500 from http://www.stikc.com with dual x5650, 8GB ram, and minimize all other components as I have HDs, etc. that I will use already. around $360 (maybe plus shipping)

Option 2: Lenovo ThinkServer TS140, Xeon E3-1225 v3, 4 GB ram, nothing else $323 from Amazon

Either way I'll need to add RAM obviously. I would like some advice on which would be better for this use case. Using ESXI as the hypervisor. Running Plex (serving 1-2 TVs and 1-2 Kindle Fire HDs though not likely all at once) possibly on Windows 7 as I use WMC to record shows from a HD HomeRun prime, 2-3 instances of Windows server 2008 r2 or 2012 r2 (these would be for learning, AD, file sharing)

Please feel free to ask anything you need to know before you are comfortable giving an opinion.
 
I would go with the E3 as it has lower power consumption by far and you still get quad cores.
 
While the x5650 is a good processor it is also sort of long in the tooth and several generations behind. Heck, I'd sell you one of my hosts guts depending on RAM needed.
 
Last edited:
peanuthead said:
I would go with the E3 as it has lower power consumption by far and you still get quad cores.
Click to expand...

The E3 would probably work great for the OP's setup. The only down side to it is being limited to 32GB ram maximum. It has a faster single threaded speed than the X5650's and being many generations newer has a higher IPC and only sips power.

The advantage to the T7500 is more processing power for multithreaded tasks, more ram capacity and the ability to use cheaper ECC Registered instead of UDIMMS only.

The downsides to the T7500 are it will suck power and you are dealing with used older hardware that may or may not last.

*edit*
Processing power wise, using Cinebench R15
1225 v3 = 520 multit core 140 single core
2x x5650 = 1297 multi core 93 single core
 
The OP stated this "Running Plex (serving 1-2 TVs and 1-2 Kindle Fire HDs though not likely all at once)" so I'm not able to see the need in having 12 cores/24 threads to handle that light of a load. Cool in the e-peen category but total overkill for what this person is doing IMO. The Windows learning VMs need a max of two cores and that is being way generous. bottom line is that RAM will be the killer for you, or not.

1-2GB RAM per Windows VM x3 instances = 3-6GB RAM
Plex - 10-12GB should be a plenty I would think for the load he/she is putting on the system

That still leaves the user to increase to another 16GB if needed. Registered ECC versus unbuffered is not that much different in cost (talking new not used).
 
Last edited:
peanuthead said:
The OP stated this "Running Plex (serving 1-2 TVs and 1-2 Kindle Fire HDs though not likely all at once)" so I'm not able to see the need in having 12 cores/24 threads to handle that light of a load. Cool in the e-peen category but total overkill for what this person is doing IMO. The Windows learning VMs need a max of two cores and that is being way generous. bottom line is that RAM will be the killer for you, or not.

1-2GB RAM per Windows VM x3 instances = 3-6GB RAM
Plex - 10-12GB should be a plenty I would think for the load he/she is putting on the system

That still leaves the user to increase to another 16GB if needed. Registered ECC versus unbuffered is not that much different in cost (talking new not used).
Click to expand...

I agree with you.

My main home server/lab is total over-kill: dual E5-2450L 8 core, 64GB ECC Ram, etc. While it's fun to have that much power it really is not necessary, but thanks to some killer e-bay deals it was cheaper than my i7-5820K main desktop.

Using Plex I was able to stream to 2 roku boxes and 2 ipads at one time on a i3-2120 system with only 4gb of ram. CPU usage was about maxed out but they streamed fine. The E3-1225 will do just fine.
 
Thank you all for your input. I am definitely leaning toward the Lenovo with the E3-1225 now. I'll add 8GB sticks of RAM as finances allow until I max it. Thinking of the overkill of 12 cores with the T7500 was holding me back.

Again, thanks for the opinions!
 
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