[SOLVED] Buying a user server

[sanyo12]

Hi

I a looking to buy one of these https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Power...555484?hash=item1f0e38475c:g:-BEAAOSwZDlei8An. I am wondering if I would be able to connect a GPU(1070) to it ?

https://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pedge/en/poweredge_r210_tech_guide.pdf says it should be possible. Also I am not sure what kind of power supply to buy for this server . Could someone help me out ? Other than a power supply is there anything else I need to get this server to work ? Also how does this compare to buying a used i7 desktop ? I was wondering why these are lower priced compared to i7 desktops ?

 

[Pinhedd]

You don't need to buy a power supply for that server unless you require a redundant PSU. It has one installed already.

A few thoughts:

1. Rackmount servers are noisy beasts, especially 1U servers (1U = ~1.75 inches in height). The fans included have to be of very high RPM and numerous. 3U and 4U servers can be significantly quieter, especially under light loads because the fans are larger.

2. $159.99 isn't a very good deal for that hardware. You can do much better. I recently purchased an R820 with 4x E5-4650 (32 cores total) and 128GiB of memory for $700 USD and an R620 with 2x E5-2630 v2 (12 cores total) and 64GiB of memory for $315 USD. The R820 is especially basement friendly.

As to whether or not you can connect a GPU to it, the answer is going to be almost certainly not. There are GPUs designed specifically for installation in rackmount servers, but they're sold under professional brands such as Quatro and Radeon Pro. These are built to a more compact form factor and some are designed to be cooled by the chassis fans. A GTX 1070 is not going to fit in a 1U R210 due to height and depth limitations; furthermore, Dell rackmount servers do not have 6/8 pin PCIe connectors.

 

[sanyo12]

What would be the right server to buy so that I can connect a graphics card like 1070 to the server directly ? What is the connector that should be mentioned in the manual ? Also is ebay the place where you look or are there any other sites which you coul suggest ?

 

[faalin]

What are you doing with the server? normal servers dont have higher end graphics cards in them.

 

[sanyo12]

I am trying to train a few machine learnng networks

 

[faalin]

Is it something your just messing around with or is it work related?

Ive bought 2 HP dl360 gen 6 and a hp dl380 gen 8 server off ebay. All 3 came with 2 small drives, CPU's, ram and no OS. If your going to run a server OS then you need to look at licensing vs cpu cores, also on top of that are you going to run them in VM's or just the main OS. If your doing VM's each VM has to be licensed with a key.

One work around is to install server 2016/19 data center without a key and it will give you a 180 day trial and then install as many VMs as needed. but once the trial ends you ether need to license it or reinstall and do it all over again.

If you're just doing it to mess around and learn then i would use a desktop so once your done with it you can reuse the hardware somewhere else.