HP Gen 8 Micro Server - Teardown & CPU Replacement

One of viewers asked about processor upgrade on the HP Gen 8 MicroServer so I have done a quick follow up video on how to tear it down and a few basic recommendations. Hopefully its useful.

The processor I have gone for is an Intel Xeon E3-1265L V2, it works well for me and supports everything I want to do, it runs Plex really well which is a bonus. I also have a 256GB SSD as my boot drive and two 6TB raid 1 arrays giving me 12TB total usable storage. For a small home server this does the trick.

[jamiep]

Thanks a ton for this vid. I just recently got one of these servers for my home server and I got an upgraded CPU for it but was struggling to get the motherboard tray out and didn't want to break something from trying to muscle it out. Thanks again and enjoy my thumbs up! :)

[Duckless]

Well done thank you for taking the time to do this. It looks like a straight forward affair. The next thing is to go to an SSD.

[gohanle]

Thanks for your sharing. I just bought it from the market but I don't know if it can work with 12TB hard drives. Have you tried a HDD which is bigger than 6TB or 12TB?

[Daz_K]

I know you posted this a while ago - great video - but although I've ordered cables for fitting the SSD to the Sata ODD, I've read elsewhere it's tricky to get the server to boot from this drive (particularly if not a raid setup). I'm running Windows 10 Pro - just wondered what your set up is there? Assume that it's not Windows 10 and did you any issues getting the server to boot from the SSD? Currently I have the SSD in the first main drive slot and it works fine, but wanted to save this slot for a main drive

[andykiy]

Great video many thanks for your time and knowledge shared.

[chrisc]

Hi. Looking for some advice. I just acquired a HP gen8, it has 6gb ram, but now drives and no Ssd drive: You mention in your video this is your boot drive. I needing advice on what cables/leads I need for my boot drive, I have a spare laptop drive that will hopefully do the trick and what do you recommend for the data drives? There seems to be a load of chatter saying you go go as large as you want. I intend to use the server on my LAN, installing a database of sorts and the OS I was going cheap and installing a Linux base system. Any ideas or feedback welcome, many thanks.

[danielbiniaz]

Hi - Wanted to say this is a great video!!! I have a Gen 8 and was looking at upgrading to another off the shelf NAS but was wondering if its possible to expand the device from 4 bays? Or would it be easier to just add larger HDD to it? I have all 4 bays populated with 2x12Tb 1x10Tb and a 4Tb. I also use it as a Plex server and run docker containers on it but Im using OMV which I now wish I hadnt. Your advice would be great if you have the time to reply. Thanks

[DavidShirley]

This is great, thanks. I have ordered an Intel Xeon E3-1265L v2 2.5 GHz Quad-Core Eight-Core 45W ready to run ESXi on this Gen8. I'd love to know more about your SSD drive and how and why you use it, if it's helpful for my ESXi installation and if so, do you have a video showing the procedure? I currently have 2x2Tb in RAID 1.

[unlock-er]

Hiya, this is exactly what I want to do with CDrom to SSD replacement. What's the cable you bought? I already have a SATA cable for the data. as for the power, did you just buy a spliter and then molex to sata power?

[jerryfletcher]

Hi there, thanks for the video! I'm thinking about migrating from USB boot drives to an internal SSD. I've read somewhere that you cannot boot from the internal SATA connector. Is that correct?

[andykiy]

I have just bought one these lovely machines, installed open media vault successfully it on the reboot can’t get the machine to boot up to the operating system is this a common fault do you know please.

[roymakel]

Nice job, but the Xeon E3 might get a little bit hot on a Passive Cpu cooler.. maybe consider a Active Low profile CPU cooler.. I build this one on my GEN8 "Akasa K25"
Good luck!

[rashidlabidi]

Hi I would like to know what’s the best cpu I can add to it and what graphics card could I add to it as I bought this micro server as slandered

[JasonsLabVideos]

Don't forget to update the ilo to 4.0.