Welcome to Ben’s Bargains. Please Register, Sign in or Sign in with Facebook

Discuss (10) -
Posted at 11:53 AM on Tuesday 11/27/12 by
TheKenChan
Hotness UNHOT
Today only. Newegg has the HP ProLiant N40L Ultra Micro Tower Server System (658553-001) + Seagate Barracuda ST3000DM001 3TB 64MB SATA3 HDD for $340 with free shipping.

  • AMD Turion II Neo N40L 1.5GHz, 2GB DDR3, 250GB LFF SATA
  • PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Server Adapter, Embedded SATA Controller
    • 1
      artcab - Posted 12:00 pm PST 11/27/12 (544 Posts)  Report Spam

      GREAT little server. The included 250 GB HD works as an OS drive and can be mounted in the ODD slot, leaving the 4 vertical HDD bays free for data.

      Reply with quote
      Was this useful?
      Voting ...
      0 0
    • 2
      pigonthewing - Posted 12:21 pm PST 11/27/12 (695 Posts)  Report Spam

      Agreed, rock solid server.

      I have three of these: one home media server, one offsite backup stashed at my parents' house, one for the office.

      Installing PCI cards or RAM means disconnecting every cable and sliding out the motherboard, but it's worth it for the small size. How often do you really need to do that anyway?

      Hard drives screw into their own individual caddies and are easy to swap out. Comes with a full set of spare screws and an allen wrench integrated in the front door.

      There's an internal USB 2.0 port (not just a header, a real port so you can boot ESXi from a flash drive) and a fifth internal SATA port for an optical drive or boot SSD. Rumor has it you can flash the BIOS to convert the eSATA port on the back to work as an internal, but I haven't experimented yet.

      Overall quality construction and VERY quiet when turned on.

      Reply with quote
      Was this useful?
      Voting ...
      0 0
    • 3
      illuxion - Posted 12:22 pm PST 11/27/12 (107 Posts)  Report Spam

      I paid $250 last year for this with WHS 2011, and I love it. I put in a 60gig vertex 2 to boot, 8gb, a radeon 5450, and 4x2tb greens. This little beasty has been the perfect media center and storage box. It sits about 35w at idle and 55w while watching a blu-ray iso.

      Reply with quote
      Was this useful?
      Voting ...
      0 0
    • 4
      artcab - Posted 1:03 pm PST 11/27/12 (544 Posts)  Report Spam

      #2 would love details on the offsite backup setup.

      Reply with quote
      Was this useful?
      Voting ...
      0 0
    • 5
      zzyzx - Posted 1:11 pm PST 11/27/12 (5131 Posts)  Report Spam

      Why not use the extra computer you have sitting some where at your place or pick one up at a thrift store and re-purpose it for a server?

      Reply with quote
      Was this useful?
      Voting ...
      0 0
    • 6
      artcab - Posted 1:18 pm PST 11/27/12 (544 Posts)  Report Spam

      I've done that too #5. Nothing sits around here too long - it either gets repurposed, rehabbed and given away to friends and family, or e-cycled if it's obsolete or broken.

      Reply with quote
      Was this useful?
      Voting ...
      0 0
    • 7
      LJW - Posted 2:23 pm PST 11/27/12 (1450 Posts)  Report Spam

      You lost me at WHS.

      Reply with quote
      Was this useful?
      Voting ...
      0 0
    • 8
      pcspecialist - Posted 3:03 pm PST 11/27/12 (297 Posts)  Report Spam

      I got the same server with only a 250GB hard drive earlier this year for just over $100. I am using it for my HTPC.

      Reply with quote
      Was this useful?
      Voting ...
      0 0
    • 9
      pigonthewing - Posted 5:26 pm PST 11/27/12 (695 Posts)  Report Spam

      #4 CrashPlan. Both servers are set up pretty much identically:

      Windows Server 2008 R2 on a 60gb boot SSD hooked to the optical drive's SATA port. I left the optical drive in place just for the hell of it, but it's unplugged unless I'm doing surgery on the machines.

      First two HDD bays are a 2.0TB RAID1 SMB share mapped to a drive letter on workstation machines, second two bays are a 3.0TB RAID1 Crashplan storage volume. Each server runs CP to back the 2.0TB up to the other server's 3.0TB. The extra 1TB means CP has some headroom for versioning and the occasional deleted file recovery.

      Reply with quote
      Was this useful?
      Voting ...
      +1 0
    • 10
      pigonthewing - Posted 5:44 pm PST 11/27/12 (695 Posts)  Report Spam

      #5 I've recycled a lot of old machines like that, but it's nice to have some purpose-built server hardware that runs cool and quiet, especially when it's sitting in your living space day after day

      I came to terms with the fact that energy savings are kind of moot; it would take a long time to make up the cost of the dedicated hardware vs. recycling, unless you're running some old Pentium4 beast.

      If you're in the market for new hardware, this is a pretty good deal. I don't think I could piece together a machine for significantly less than what I spent on the kit systems -- about $240 each without the 3tb bundled here.

      Reply with quote
      Was this useful?
      Voting ...
      0 0

    Already a member? Sign in below.

    Forgot Password?
    Sign in with Facebook

    Registration takes seconds! Once registered you’ll have members only access to:

    • Deal Alert email notifications
    • Giveaways for the hottest products
    • Newsletter for events and holiday promotions
    • Deal comments and discussions
    • The best deal community, ever
    or