HP Microserver for £75!!!

[trogggy]

I've been looking at these for ages, but at £75 I couldn't say no any longer. Stick a cheap graphics card in and it's an xbmc machine and server combined.
http://www.box.co.uk/HP_ProLiant_MicroS ... 41681.html
£189.99 on the site.
Enter code HP15OFF to take that down to £174.99.
Claim £100 cashback from HP.

Thread on HUKD is here if anyone's interested:
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/hp-prol ... 3#comments

[asbo]

ah nice! I can definitely recommend these, I have one running unRAID with all my media, backups etc. on, great bit of kit
The hacked BIOS is a must so you can have 6 hard drives in there. Got a minecraft server on there too, loads of stuff.

[spicemuseum]

I've been looking at these for ages, but at £75 I couldn't say no any longer. Stick a cheap graphics card in and it's an xbmc machine and server combined.
http://www.box.co.uk/HP_ProLiant_MicroS ... 41681.html
£189.99 on the site.
Enter code HP15OFF to take that down to £174.99.
Claim £100 cashback from HP.

Excellent timing. My MythTV server blew up last week. Been looking at sourcing parts, but at that price I'm not going to bother.

--EDIT--
Ordered.

[professor_jonny]

shipping makes it expencive to nz (-: i keep looking locally for one.

[spicemuseum]

Received.

[spicemuseum]

Cashback claim posted (snail mail).

[Geeba]

Awesome little boxes! I have two!

Current home server N36L running WHS 2011, sat here now building N40L with Windows Server Essentials 2012 - the N40L is taking it in its stride! 8Gb RAM and all good!

Definitely recommend these to anyone! run the hacked BIOS to use the ODD port as a full speed AHCI port.. then you have use of the 4 drive bays for storage. 3TB WD Reds work great.

Or boot VMware or FreeNAS off the internal USB port.

[spicemuseum]

Current home server N36L running WHS 2011, sat here now building N40L with Windows Server Essentials 2012 - the N40L is taking it in its stride! 8Gb RAM and all good!

Definitely recommend these to anyone! run the hacked BIOS to use the ODD port as a full speed AHCI port.

Can you post a link to the tutorial you followed for this. (There's a lot of confusing and contradictory info out there!)

(Aside, mine will probably end up running Mythbuntu 12.04.)

[asbo]

This is basically what I did but with the N40L instead. I also have a 2.5" cache drive sitting under the ODD bay, connected via the rear eSATA port.

[spicemuseum]

This is basically what I did but with the N40L instead. I also have a 2.5" cache drive sitting under the ODD bay, connected via the rear eSATA port.

Great link, thanks.

My set-up will be different to that, but I definitely want to be able to go to an unrestricted 6 hard disc configuration, so will be using a revised BIOS. And I'll follow that tutorial, except for the actual BIOS files - looks like TheBay's BIOS might be a better bet.
http://www.avforums.com/forums/networki ... pport.html

I'll probably buy a small capacity 2.5" SSD to hold the OS and programs. ...and two more 3TB discs to complete the set of five for my data!

[asbo]

yeah TheBays one is what you want
I have the OS running of a USB stick in the handy internal USB port. Of course unRAID is a bit different, never writing to the stick an all, so that's probably not wise for other OSes.

[spicemuseum]

yeah TheBays one is what you want
I have the OS running of a USB stick in the handy internal USB port. Of course unRAID is a bit different, never writing to the stick an all, so that's probably not wise for other OSes.

Right, and in any case, 5x3TB should be enough storage for now. Shureley...?

[asbo]

yeah TheBays one is what you want
I have the OS running of a USB stick in the handy internal USB port. Of course unRAID is a bit different, never writing to the stick an all, so that's probably not wise for other OSes.

Right, and in any case, 5x3TB should be enough storage for now. Shureley...?

You'd think wouldn't you
I bunged a bunch of random disks in mine, here a screen shot of the info page that you may find vaguely interesting: linked because its huge
side note wtf has photobucket done with their upload system!

[spicemuseum]

BIOS modded (TheBay).

[spicemuseum]

[27th June]
Cashback claim posted (snail mail).

...and at last:
£100 cashback cheque received (~9th Aug whilst I was away on hols).