[SOLVED] I want to buy a used server 4 to 6 bays. Which has the lowest energy use?

[CAlbertson]

I have an older Synology NAS that is ARM-based and never was really fast. I want to upgrade it. But then I think way not buy a used HP server? These are dirt cheap at both eBay and Newegg. But the older Xeon powered units will run up my electric bill.

What I want is something that holds at least 4 disk drives, about 8GB each, and has room for growth. This is for personal use. I keep about 500G of photos and some times do video projects. (1080p) but mainly software development involving machine Learning. These projects can use a few terabytes of data. I want the source code I write to be on RAID with automated onsite and offsite (cloud) backups. It will run Ubuntu Server.

The main criteria are that it be much more cost-effective than buying another Synology and fast enough that will have no trouble serving files via SMB and NFS at full 1000Base-T wire speed or even two aggregated ports.

My main workstation is a beast that makes a nice room heater. I'm looking for something lighter on power. Synology is good in this respect but lacks performance.

It need not be an actual server chassis, A tower with 4 to 6 drive bays would be OK but these $200 used server chassis seem to be MUCH better built.

 

[Alabalcho]

Big mechanical hard drives tend to draw power. Server-class PSUs might not be 80% efficient, and may draw power even when not fully loaded, so you should carefully read specs. You should also not forget that these servers are designed for server rooms, and will be noisy.