HP Microserver

Use a trebuchet to launch it instead of a mangonel, should go faster through the air ... maybe gladwrap it some so it doesnt rip itself apart during launch :D
 
Turn into a NAS (I use OPENELEC) and buy an Android Box. I did this and it is like night and day. The MS works well and the Shield is super quick.
 
B-1 said:
SSD for OS, more RAM and a lightweight Linux distro.
Click to expand...
I upgraded mine with an SSD.
It didn’t make a huge difference.
I think the CPU is the bottleneck on these machines.
 
Chingha said:
Turn into a NAS (I use OPENELEC) and buy an Android Box. I did this and it is like night and day. The MS works well and the Shield is super quick.
Click to expand...
I second this.

Running OpenMediaVault on my N40L and it's performing flawlessly. The OS is on an older SATA SSD and it also runs a dozen or so containers in Docker.

Anything with a GUI will choke the CPU as it is pretty weak, but a headless OS works well for serving content and services.
 
zhsa said:
I upgraded mine with an SSD.
It didn’t make a huge difference.
I think the CPU is the bottleneck on these machines.
Click to expand...

What OS are you running?
 
PhireSide said:
I second this.

Running OpenMediaVault on my N40L and it's performing flawlessly. The OS is on an older SATA SSD and it also runs a dozen or so containers in Docker.

Anything with a GUI will choke the CPU as it is pretty weak, but a headless OS works well for serving content and services.
Click to expand...
Also running OMV on my n54l with Plex installed. Got 4gb of ram in mine and an ssd (a waste to be honest) and it runs Plex without a hiccup.

Bear in mind that I mainly use direct stream so almost no encoding is done on the cpu's side unless there's srt files (subtitle files) and you opt to have it enabled (subtitles that's already hard baked on the video does not require encoding).

It struggles with h.265 videos but I think it's a limitation of Plex and not the hardware.
 
Ive owned a few of these over the years.

Only thing that helps is an SSD for OS
 
I'm still running the N40L to backup files to and a Media Server for accessing older content when required. As long as you use direct play and don't try using the PC for transcoding it works fine. The lightest OS that supports Plex Server would be good.

I've tried many. The one that I ran the longest was Diet-PI https://dietpi.com/dietpi-software.html

Although currently running a hacked version of Synology Diskstation software on it which has been fun.
 
moondoggie86 said:
Also running OMV on my n54l with Plex installed. Got 4gb of ram in mine and an ssd (a waste to be honest) and it runs Plex without a hiccup.

Bear in mind that I mainly use direct stream so almost no encoding is done on the cpu's side unless there's srt files (subtitle files) and you opt to have it enabled (subtitles that's already hard baked on the video does not require encoding).

It struggles with h.265 videos but I think it's a limitation of Plex and not the hardware.
Click to expand...
I also used to use Plex, but recently moved over to Jellyfin because of Plex needing an active internet connection to stream locally, and our unreliability of the FTTH service at home. The only thing that gave me some headaches was a setting on the user profile for Jellyfin where I had to turn off transcoding for all the users. Unlike Plex, there isn't a global setting to turn it off.

I wasn't able to get my GT710 to work properly through Docker but admittedly I didn't spend a whole lot of time with it. Direct play works just fine through from normal SD files all the way to up to 4k HEVC files and I haven't noticed any hiccups.

I have 8GB of RAM in my server, but rarely go above 3GB. The high CPU load is because of a library scan in Lidarr:

1615966687321.png

And the current containers that I have running on it. Usually CPU usage idles at around 5 - 10%, and goes up to 15% or so when playing media through Jellyfin

1615966773480.png
 
marine1 said:
Hey guys is there anyway to speed this thing up?
It is so slow, I use it as a media centre but to actually do something on it, its like working on windows 3.0

View attachment 1037398

View attachment 1037400


View attachment 1037402

View attachment 1037404



View attachment 1037406
Click to expand...
I have a G7...they're awesome, but I also only have 2GB RAM and a GT310 card in connected to my PC.
I want to get an SSD for the Windows 10 OS (which actually doesn't run badly on this hardware at all) which I expect will speed up things quite a bit.

This is my recommendation. UDIMM memory has become very expensive, so if you can get it you'll pay (Amazon had the last time I checked, but it was pricey in 2019!).
 
Turn it into a Synology unit with Xpenology.

Tutorials and Guides

This is the tutorial factory. If you are looking for an answer look here first. If you have a question about a thread that's already here, feel free to ask it. Don't start a topic for a specific question. Use the other forums for that. You can post in existing topics but new ones will have to be...
xpenology.com
 
PhireSide said:
I also used to use Plex, but recently moved over to Jellyfin because of Plex needing an active internet connection to stream locally, and our unreliability of the FTTH service at home. The only thing that gave me some headaches was a setting on the user profile for Jellyfin where I had to turn off transcoding for all the users. Unlike Plex, there isn't a global setting to turn it off.

I wasn't able to get my GT710 to work properly through Docker but admittedly I didn't spend a whole lot of time with it. Direct play works just fine through from normal SD files all the way to up to 4k HEVC files and I haven't noticed any hiccups.

I have 8GB of RAM in my server, but rarely go above 3GB. The high CPU load is because of a library scan in Lidarr:

View attachment 1037504

And the current containers that I have running on it. Usually CPU usage idles at around 5 - 10%, and goes up to 15% or so when playing media through Jellyfin

View attachment 1037508
Click to expand...
Thanks for the write up! Was thinking of moving away from Plex due to the h.265 limitation and the huge strain it puts on the cpu. I'm seeing cpu usage up to 70% when streaming 1080p h.264 videos and usage of 100% when copying files to and from the server (which drops the copy speed by 70% when reaching 100% usage).

I'm currently running with 4gb of ram (only found out my first dimm slot is busted when I tried to upgrade my capacity).

Plex shouldn't need to have an active connection if you're using direct play. Normally it's required when making the server available to the outside world. Port forwarding might have helped but alas it seems you are quite happy with Jellyfin (which I'll install this afternoon kind sir).

Oh and for everyone else, lol, there's n40 and n54 wiki's with custom bios'. I think the one I got allows me to install 16gb (I think) of up to 1600mhz ramzors.

There's a list of compatible dimms on there as well.
 
Hemps said:
Turn it into a Synology unit with Xpenology.

Tutorials and Guides

This is the tutorial factory. If you are looking for an answer look here first. If you have a question about a thread that's already here, feel free to ask it. Don't start a topic for a specific question. Use the other forums for that. You can post in existing topics but new ones will have to be...
xpenology.com
Click to expand...
UI looks nice. Only issue I had when initially choosing an OS was that majority (Synology) had their own file system so you have to format the drive. I just wanted to dump my drive with all the files in the server without needing to format the drive i.e. not losing my files).
 
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