My Office is coming along nicely now and my Homelab changed a bit during this time – its still very much Work In Progress but i have usable lab which i am starting to setup fully.
Originally I planned on using a HP DL380 G5 and a few HP Microservers for my lab – but i changed my mind.. Instead I opted for a HP XW6600 Workstation: HP XW6600
I got this off Ebay for about £100 – this was fairly Bare bones but had a Semi Decent Xeon Processor – E5440 @ 2.83GHz
Reasons for the this workstation:
- Supports Virtualization
- Can take 48GB of RAM (possibly 64GB still to confirm)
- Plenty of Space in the chassis for upgrades / expansion
You will also see from the above Image – It upgraded to Windows 10 with no issues at all – so I am now running Workstation 12.
I have installed 2 SATA drives – One for OS and a 2TB for VMs – but I just bought a 2.5″ Caddy to install an SSD which i will migrate my OS over to very shortly.
Also the Motherboard can take another CPU so I will end up with 2 x Xeon Processors (last time looked on Ebay they were around £15 – £20 for a CPU)
UPDATE: I purchased another CPU for £14 on Ebay Used, and realized that the Heatsink was actually going to cost more. I purchased a used Heatsink for £30 and got this installed. This now has 2 x Xeons CPUs with 8 Cores
UPDATE 2: I ordered 64GB RAM off Ebay for £90, The HP Specs state 32GB but so far I have added 48 GB and it is working fine. Looks like I may have an issue with one of the DIMMS, so leaving it at 48GB for Now and will try again soon.
UPDATE 3: I ordered an SSD (Listed below) and I have used EaseUS Todo Backup Free to Clone my HDD to SSD
I now have 3 x Monitors; 2 x 22″ and 1 x 27″ which are hooked up to my MacBook Pro, see Three External Monitors Post
I am using Microsoft Remote Desktop to connect to my Lab PC and I have a couple of Linux Servers and a Kali Pi which i either use SSH or I have No Machine setup
These are all setup on Wall Mount Cantilevers so i can move them all around as necessary
Heres a list of what i have bought:
- Western Digital 2TB SATA III Hard Drive – WD 2TB Hard Drive – Currently £59.99
- Icy Box Internal Mounting Frame for 2x 2.5 inch SSD/HDD to 3.5 inch Bay – 2.5″/3.5″ Caddy – Currently £3.99
- BenQ GL2250HM LED 21.5 -inch Multimedia Monitor 1920 x 1080, DVI, HDMI,, 12M:1, 2 ms – Benq 21.5″ Monitor – Currently £88.13
- BenQ GW2760HM LED 27″ Monitor – Currently £164
- VonHaus Basics Cantilever Arm Bracket Wall Mount with Swivel and Tilt – Monitor Wall Mount – Currently £11.99
- HDMI KING 1.8M (6ft) Imperial Series 240hz+ HDMI Cable v1.4 Gold Plated, Double Insulated – HDMI Cables – Currently £2.59
- 48GB RAM Upgrade – Off Ebay for about £60
- Additional Xeon CPU – Off Ebay for £14
- CPU Heatsink – Off Ebay for £30
- Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD – £72.99
- Plugable Active Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter
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