Favorite recycled "enterprise" mini-tower?

[richardm]

Do any of the 2015-2017ish enterprise towers (or desktops) stand out from their competition? I'm looking at Lenovo, HP Elitedesk, Dell Optiplex, etc etc. It's clear these companies are benchmarking each other as their offerings are so similar...

I'm zeroing-in on LGA1151 (Skylake/Kaby Lake/Covfefe Lake) as I reckon they're at the sweet spot where performance and cost intersect. LGA1200 costs noticeably more; anything older doesn't save much. Also considering workstation-class stuff...

I know the ThinkStation S30 (Ivy Bridge) is kinda-sorta E-ATX and can be transplanted into a white-box case with some effort. I've seen consumer mini-towers from major vendors that look very ATX-like inside. Do we know of any that are truly ATX?

 

[rtech]

If you want to transplant proprietary workstation to normal case be prepared to deal with lot of gotchas
- proprietary PSU 12V solvable by adapter cable see aliexpress
- proprietary fan connectors solvable by making custom connectors
- proprietary motherboard form factors impossible to solve it pretty with dell
- frontal I/O incompatibility with normal cases solvable by taking out the frontal I/O and transplanting it to new case?

What do you hope to accomplish here?
Experience from other sther who had done such transplatation?

If you embark on this be prepared to spend a lot of time on it.

 

[USER189364]

I have had pretty good luck with the T5820/T7920 Precision Workstations. They have some quirks (Like if you change any internal component or swap the front NVME drives, it will go through several restarts before the system comes back up, as it detects and recognizes the new configuration)

Overall though, they have worked fairly well for me. I do miss having Idrac though....

 

[Stephan]

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but the fact alone that Dell locks EPYCs to their systems as documented here https://www.servethehome.com/amd-psb-vendor-locks-epyc-cpus-for-enhanced-security-at-a-cost/ makes me just want to punish them for it by buying something else. Also add wrong item (GPU) or remove anything from the system and fans go to a 100% so get some ear protection first. HPE, Lenovo, same concepts. Too much proprietary stuff as rtech mentioned. Need to research first also, if their BIOS or management solutions don't contain stupid component whitelists. I.e. no boot with wrong card. Or whitelist for SFP-modules, thanks HPE.

Have you thought about a Fractal Torrent case and just transplanting standardized ATX stuff into it? Wouldn't go lower than Skylake, those should be cheap enough. For the anger and money and wasted time trying to mod anything you could just as well get an X11SPL-F and some off-roadmap Amazon CPU, mod BIOS and VRM and just use that. 3647 Noctua cooler is 100 bucks but RDIMM DDR4 has gotten pretty cheap.

 

[andrea87]

I would advise caution when rebuilding a machine using workstation parts from big OEMs.

Three years ago I've built myself a home server using a dell pttt9 motherboard (socket 2011v1, ddr3) from a precision T3600. The board is entirely custom (and larger than ATX). It's powered by a 24 pin molex, with several connections swapped. I had to build myself an adapter to use the MB. All fans are dell custom 5 pin, which do need to be converted / rewired as well. The board does not have the threaded inserts that normally exist in the LGA2011 ILM, as in their design they look to be fixed into the case for better heatsink support.

While being a cheap build (got the board for about 40€), it has been a fair bit of a nightmare to get everything working correctly. The board is compatible with only E5 v1 chips, not V2s.

If you plan to go down this route, research the parts very throughly and make sure you don't have any surprise coming your way.

 

[richardm]

If you want to transplant proprietary workstation to normal case be prepared to deal with lot of gotchas

"Transplantability" would be nice but it's not the end-goal. It's mostly irrelevant to me. I regret mentioning it now.

 

[richardm]

Everyone's piling-on telling me what crap these things are because they're so non-standard. Trust me, I know.

I just want to know if any models in particular are attractive to this group for any reason. That reason may or may not include the ability to transplant parts. I wish I hadn't tacked that bit onto my post because this thread went completely off the rails.

 

[OrlyP]

I recently bought a used ProDesk 400 G3 SFF with an i5-6500 to run my home firewall. I would've happily gotten an equivalent Dell or a Lenovo but this HP was cheapest. Though, I had to replace both 80mm fans with a couple of Arctic P8 to lower the noise. The CPU fan header is a standard 4-pin, but the case fan uses an offset-keyed 4-pin connector. Otherwise, the pinouts were standard. I just forced the fan connector in there, physically bending the key. It's working pretty well.

Nothing stands out between all those brands, IMO. But as they are corporate devices and sold in bulk, they were mostly chosen for being the lowest bidder at point-of-sale.

 

[Stephan]

I wish I hadn't tacked that bit onto my post because this thread went completely off the rails.

But didn't that answer your question. As far as the STH audience is concerned, nothing particularly appears to stand out.

 

[richardm]

Otherwise, the pinouts were standard. I just forced the fan connector in there, physically bending the key. It's working pretty well.

I have a Lenovo S30 that's known to get persnickety when fans are replaced -- even if the wiring is correct. So this is a topic near and dear to me!

 

[OrlyP]

I have a Lenovo S30 that's known to get persnickety when fans are replaced -- even if the wiring is correct. So this is a topic near and dear to me!

That is true. I guess I got lucky. I have a decade-old HP Microserver N40L which uses proprietary fan signaling. If the fan goes out, you can't just drop in an aftermarket 120mm fan. But some ingenious people had to make a circuit to simulate the signal that the motherboard is expecting. Without it, or if the signal is incorrect, the motherboard shuts down and throws an error.

 

[Helzy]

That is true. I guess I got lucky. I have a decade-old HP Microserver N40L which uses proprietary fan signaling. If the fan goes out, you can't just drop in an aftermarket 120mm fan. But some ingenious people had to make a circuit to simulate the signal that the motherboard is expecting. Without it, or if the signal is incorrect, the motherboard shuts down and throws an error.

AHA!

Do you happen to know where to find an example of said circuit? I just retired an N54L last week, perfect working order, just needs a 120mm fan lol!

 

[OrlyP]

AHA!

Do you happen to know where to find an example of said circuit? I just retired an N54L last week, perfect working order, just needs a 120mm fan lol!

That'll be next to impossible. The post was from the now-defunct homeservershow forum. I tried looking for the specific thread in the waybackmachine, to no success.

However, I can offer you an alternative solution. Using a specific fan (Cougar CF-V12HP) and a bit of finesse to do a pin-swap on the connector to match the proprietary HP fan header pinouts, you should be able to put your Microserver Gen 7 back into service. Details here: Replacing the fans in my HP N40L Microserver

 

[Helzy]

Hey thanks, ahh didn't realize homeservershow forums were defunct.

 

[zachj]

I think the HP Z series is fabulous and would highly recommend. It’s basically their DL-series server in a workstation form factor.
I personally have used the Z420/Z620 and, more recently, the Z6 G4.

If you want small form factor they’ve got a Z2 and, if you want older, the Z240.