A used rack server shows the tradeoff against a Mac mini server
A new homelab setup starts with a Dell PowerEdge R730 with 16 small drive bays. The hardware includes two Intel Xeon E5-2697A v4 processors, two 32GB DDR4 server memory sticks, two 1TB consumer SATA SSDs, dual 1100W power supplies, an Nvidia Quadro K1200 , iDRAC 8 , a 1 gigabit 4-port network card, and an H330 mini RAID card. Proxmox is already installed as the system for running and managing .
Storage is starting small because of budget limits, with an upgrade planned later. Compared with a quiet, low-power , this is a much larger used business server with more room for drives and , but likely higher power use, more noise, and more space needs.
Key points
- The setup uses a Dell PowerEdge R730 with 16 small drive bays.
- Proxmox is installed to run and manage multiple .
- The machine has two Xeon processors, server memory, dual power supplies, and a RAID card.
- Storage starts with two 1TB SATA SSDs, with plans to upgrade later.
- Against a , the main tradeoff is more expansion in exchange for more power, noise, and space.