A bit of perspective from outside the formal review:
- These HPE Smart Buy servers are fairly well-known for being upgraded with aftermarket components. For example, we did not use HPE Smart Memory for the 6x16GB configuration.
- I got ours, shipped, for under $970. A 16GB DDR4-2666 stick and Intel Xeon Silver 4108 combined sell for around $600.
- It is quieter than most of the SM/ Xeon D micro servers I have at home, even under load.
- If you compare it to an Intel Xeon D-1541 board, like the X10SDV-F:
- Price is similar
- Xeon D mITX is smaller for smaller systems
- ML110 Gen10 power consumption is a bit more, but well below E5 V2
- More room for RAM upgrades
- More room for PCIe upgrades
- More SATA III available
- The ML110 Gen10 is sub-27dba in the vast majority of uses. It took AVX-512 to get it close to 30dba.
- If you are looking at Intel Xeon Scalable, and did not want the Silver 4108, you can sell that and effectively get the system for < $400, or less than the cost of many scalable motherboards
- I appreciate the needs 6x DIMMs. On the other hand, there are a ton of systems out there with one, two, and four DIMMs installed. This is very common.
- If you want to go 1-6 DIMMs, this platform makes sense. If you want to go 7+ DIMMs, there are a lot of other options out there.
As an aside, after the first one came in, I actually bought another. I did so having a fairly good selection of hardware and perspective on what is out there and what is coming up soon.
I know some of the smaller blogs are pumping Xeon D still for home virtualization. If you can spare the space, the $970 server is less expensive and better than the D-1541. You can get older technology, but I know I have some places these days where I just want something new with a warranty. I also got a ~$300 rebate over the $970 buying through the channel on a special offer so my actual net on these systems is closer to $670. The Intel Xeon E-2100 systems are faster, but I like the PCIe lanes and memory channels.
