Acquired a HP Server what to do...?

banbutcher

Well Folks,

Lookin for a bit of tech info.... I recently got my hands on a HP 350 ML g3!! Inside is a single 2.8 processor and 256 ram, and its a fairly sluggish bitch... My question is can I bang in 8gb of ram and another 2.8 processor will it run much better? Plan is to stick In a sata controller cards in and fill it with all my media and use it as the house server!(4-6 HDD's comin off the raid controler?) The parts are cheap enough so no real hastle, or am I stupid to be doin it??

on a semi side note if i was to put in the second cpu do i need the second PPM?

is this all possible, or what yould anyone suggest i do with it??

Thanks Richie

Cuddlesworth

The power draw and noise alone would make it worthless. I defiantly wouldn't advise actually spending money on it.

Monotype

2.8 what? Pentium 4? Xeon? What generation?

If it's old it probably wouldn't support 8GB of RAM.

Edit: Something like this?
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11430_na/11430_na.HTML

Edit 2: I think it's most likely one of these CPUs.
http://ark.intel.com/products/27273/Intel-Xeon-Processor-2_80-GHz-1M-Cache-533-MHz-FSB
http://ark.intel.com/products/27274/Intel-Xeon-Processor-2_80-GHz-512K-Cache-400-MHz-FSB
http://ark.intel.com/products/27275/Intel-Xeon-Processor-2_80-GHz-512K-Cache-533-MHz-FSB

On top of the power consumption and noise that Cuddlesworth pointed out, these are only 32-bit CPUs so you wouldn't be using a 64-bit OS. You could use more RAM than 4GB with PAE and windows server.

The cheapest modern desktop CPUs of €30 will out perform this. The inefficiency of the CPU on top of an old PSU and older OS means that you could end up paying for it in electricity over time.

I would be hesitant to put much money into it anyway. To get a bit more out of it, a new OS install could be helpful (although you'd want to check that you have all the drivers) to a faster HDD (do you have extra HDDs around already?).

Cuddlesworth

Hmm, I thought it was a rack mount server. Still worthless though. Check the drives at the front too. Chances are with HP/Compaq that it has the proprietary SCSI connectors on them.

banbutcher

i dont really want to use this machine as a main pc, was hoping to use it more like storage (i have a few hdds layin about!) and install a PS3 media server to allow acess from around the house, im not concered about noise, it will be out of the way!

the extra cpu and ram all come to less than 50euro!

if its worthless, whats my best option? could i gut it and put some modern bits into it??

Cuddlesworth

banbutcher wrote: »

i dont really want to use this machine as a main pc, was hoping to use it more like storage (i have a few hdds layin about!) and install a PS3 media server to allow acess from around the house, im not concered about noise, it will be out of the way!

the extra cpu and ram all come to less than 50euro!

if its worthless, whats my best option? could i gut it and put some modern bits into it??

After a couple of months of 24/7 you would have used enough power to have bought a low power NAS at the start.

Assuming it will only pull 300 watts at the plug(kind estimate for that era), running it 24/7 will cost roughly 450 Euro's a year. Add in that money you spent on an extra proc and hard-drives and the increased power usage, you might be looking at a overall usage cost of 550+.

A low power 20 watt NAS would cost around 30 Euros a year to run. Look at the type of NAS you can buy for 500 Euros, then tell me that workstation is worth spending money on.

banbutcher

so pretty much scrap it! i can strip it out and build something nice maybe!

thanks for the input!

Richie

Cuddlesworth

No problem.