2d ago

Mini PC vs poweredge r730xd server. What are your thoughts?

I have seen a lot of people on reddit claiming that getting a mini pc is better than an enterprise server. But when looking at the price of an N100 vs the price of a used poweredge r730xd even assuming international shipping of over $500 if you buy from eBay and don't live in the US. Many of them build clusters that would cost more than one enterprise server, it seems like a hassle.

3 comments

I absolutely love my r730xd. Keep in mind the server isn't the money suck, it's the HDDs to populate it that can add up very quickly. And after that, possibly your electricity bill.
- Yeah the power usage is fairly high. But if you have solar it's not a huge deal.
  I like it for it's various redundancies and the built-in RAID rebuild system has really saved my ass on multiple occasions.
  If you do get a poweredge, don't buy used HDDs. 75% of the used drives I bought failed within a year.
I live for used micro PCs from businesses. Dell micros or HP, i prefer Dell but some of the HPs have a few extra bells and whistles depending on the model. Ssd for os, nvme for storage, 64gb of ram and a 1gb nic with room for a 2.5gb nic so you can cluster and use shared storage if you need.