Had been waiting for them to get cheap again for a while, N54L 2gb ram $239, 4gb ram $249.
Also G1610T for $299
HP Microserver N54L $239 @ ShoppingExpress
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Would have loved for the Gen 8 to only be $239 :P
I'm interested to know what Oz Bargainers are using these for?
Media server?
Download box?
Thats what im using this for right now.
Also have it set up as a Print sever and Seed box.
That and RAID 5 to reduce the damage of a hard drive failure
HTPC / NAS / Download Box / Plex server / etc
HTPC - did you install a PCI card in to get HDMI output?
I personally haven't used it as a HTPC sorry i was stating examples of what it could be used for however I have done research into it and there looks like lots of information about what cards would be useful if you did want to put in it if you just google N54L graphics card.
One really good piece of advise I can give any N54L or N40L owner is use the top dvd bay to stick another hard drive. It's a really useful space and I always set my top drive to be the operating system and the rest could run in a RAID or just seperately. It makes things a lot easier.
This requires a special bios pm if you need help.
I did.
Silent graphics card for $50 (no fan), and make sure its got the short back plate (or at least packed in the box so you can change it over to the short version).
Perfect High Def Bluray's watched with no stutter or artifacts on screen.
Perfect HTPC box.
I have two of them… the older HP Microserver (N36L) also works like a dream.Nothing wrong with the processing power of these boxes at all.
Just dont buy them from Digital River (dont get me started on them!).
@UFO: Best value for money NAS's money can buy and you can really customise them. was trying to get rid of my last one as I am trying to downsize and consolidate into one mini itx case.
@UFO: You also need to make sure the heat sink is going to fit in the case. I recently bought and installed a Gigabyte NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 graphics card from eBay, unfortunately I had not realised that the heat sink made the card too big to fit. Five minutes with a hack saw fixed it though, I'm sure a 20% smaller heat sink won't cause any problems…..
@UFO: Any specific suggestions on a $50 silent graphics card (I have a N40L)? Went to buy an Asus R5 350 1G for $55, but it doesn't have the low profile brackets, so would love some specific models to look into.
Good point! Worthy for anyone considering a new graphics card to be aware of sizing… completely forgot to mention that :).
The one I bought has got a thin heatsink on it… actually stands at a height even less than the bracket!
So yeah, anyone reading make sure its thin. Doesnt have to be a huge fancy one either… just buy one for what you need (and what you need doesnt need a whole lot of graphics power).
HD5450
Stick with any of the big name brands, and tbh it wouldnt make much difference on which one you buy.
You could get a little anal and check out review sites to buy the very best scoring one, but the difference would be 1 or 2 fps and certainly wouldnt be noticeable in real world for the application you are seeking.As a reference, I bought something very similar to this a few years back (same time as the N36L deal here on OzBargain, so what… about 2 years ago?).
http://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Graphics_Cards/AMD/44286-…
Same colours, heatsink, branding, but the low profile bracket was 'single din', not double size like the one included in this pack.
But anything with no fan, and a SMALL HEATSINK in the 5450 range would be perfect for what you need.
I'd stick with 1Gb of memory… you can buy less and more, but 1Gb works great with mine.
Most, if not all would come with a low profile bracket… and plenty of them selling for $50 or less doing a quick Google search."HD5450 low profile bracket"
ie. http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&p…
$42
But like I said, most will do the job fine and all around the same price.
Edited: A crapload more here! http://www.staticice.com.au/cgi-bin/search.cgi?q=Radeon%2054…
I have two 3.5" HDDs mounted in the ODD bay using a Nexus DoubleTwin bracket: https://nexustek.us/accessories/doubletwin
The OS is on a 60GB SSD in the space under the ODD bay.@4wd:
I've been looking for one of these mounts for ages. Do they deliver to Australia ?
And I am guessing you did the Esata loop back cable for that one ?
PC Case Gear used to stock them, I think I managed to get the last two sets. It just so happens that I didn't need the second DoubleTwin - PM me and we'll work something out ;)
Re. the cable, I had a spare PCIe x1 2 port SATA150 (standard SI3132 chipset) card that I modified the bracket to be low profile, so that's plugged in, all the cables are internal.
Running Win7.
HDMI using a pci vid card and routing audio via HDMI through HT receiver.
Media server (Plex), NAS 14gb and 128 SSD for op system (no RAID, just manual backup and redundancy folders)
This is a great deal, I also got mine from SE.
Computer backup and file server using WHS2011. The N54L doesn't have any form of backup itself, (no RAID, Cloud, etc), as all data on it is classed as ephemeral.
ie. It doesn't matter if any of the HDDs die and the data is lost as really important data is backed up in other ways, (external, online, etc), directly from the other computers.
It's only on for 3 hours a day to do the backup of computers on the LAN, any time I want to watch something off of it, I just WoL and access via SAMBA.
Used to use it as a HTPC but got sick of a keyboard in lounge room. Went for a Roku3 instead.
Running Win7 and use it as:
- Plex Server
- Download box
- File ServerMoving from this to a G8 at the moment as it seems to struggle a bit streaming large movie files.
Mine at home with a few Seagate drives running Debian + LXC for virtualisation.
- File server
- Plex server
- Minecraft server
- Backup server. Keeping the 3rd copy of all our website data, as I'm having a storage VPS keeping the 2nd copy.
- VPN client. One of my LXC container runs just a Squid proxy and I uses it to connect to VPN. So I can switch to it with some of my browsers to get over the geo-block, without putting my entire computer on VPN.
N54L running Win10 with Hyper-V Role installed.
Linux ISO download VPN VM
Ubiquiti UniFi NVR
XBMC
File server
SSD and some Reds, runs like a charm and easy on the electricity
Have the previous version (N40L) - use it as a low power, Linux-driven media server/backup box on my home network. Works brilliantly.
What linux distro? I am planning to use the N54L as a media server with Sonarr/NzbGet/Torrents as well.
I use Ubuntu LTS, I forget which release I'm up to. I use the LTS versions so that I can rely on it being supported without having to upgrade all the time and mess up my carefully set up server. I originally went headless but frankly it was annoying and I see little point in it - now if there's a real problem I can just hook up a monitor and see what's going on.
With that, I'm able to:
- run software RAID well enough for my purposes (redundant backup and media server)
- run Universal Media Server, which is an awesome derivative of Playstation Media Server which turns it into a DLNA-compliant media server/transcoder
- run a torrent client (I use deluge because it's simply, fast, and has no crapware)
- run a permanent VPN so George Brandeis can't read my metadata
I then feed data from the server to a silent Windows box running Kodi and Steam in big picture mode, which is effectively the renderer. That way there are no issues resulting from transcoding 1080p stuff, for example - any heavy lifting happens on the renderer (which has some Soviet-style 8 core AMD chip in it).
@everyone #Thanks for the replies and info guys really innovation and nifty uses, well done to you all. :)
Would be great if they updated their Ebay store with these prices…
been lurking waiting for a good microserver deal for a while (and in the meantime the motherboard on my homebuilt NAS has packed in…).
Im not sure whether to go for the 4gb N54L or the G8?
Its is/will be a 24/7 home server, used predominantly for media which is then streamed to WDTV's around the house (via wifi). My current (dead) setup is 4x 3TB running NAS4FREE on raid 5 and that has been working fine.any thoughts on which is the best option?
G8 is worth the upgrade … Especially if Plex might be transcoding the files on the fly
My setup serves 3 clients including a chromecast, and plex usually has to transcode for chromecast … Works flawlessly with G8 … using just 4GB RAM
I made an impulse buy and have been trying to sell it off on gumtree cheaper than this but no one buys… Here 9 votes already !
N54L or G1610T? What`s your price? :)
Sorry, realised its G1610T. Please check my classifieds. Don't want to discuss a sale and upset a few here. :)
I was tossing up between N54L or G1610T for storage with redundancy setup.
Can any one tell me how it perform in zfs/mirror/scrub duty with just the original 4gb RAM?It's a shame they didn't reduce the price in their ebay store… it remains at $289. Still, you might be better of going through ebay for the $100 click & collect voucher and put it towards a hard drive next month.
I send them a message to ask and they are not reducing the ebay price. Didn`t say why. Anyway they are going to loose out, anyone buying one of these from ebay could have used the voucher to buy a HD from them.
On first look I thought this was Gen 8, then on second look disappointment ;)