A SERIOUS Home Server That's Affordable

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⚙ 3D Model for P520 Drive Cage:

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Music (in order):
"If You Want To" - Me
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Timestamps:
0:00 I think this could be a great home server
0:40 Sponsor - UGreen
1:56 Lenovo P520
2:45 Specs and Features
5:53 Proprietary Nonsense
6:20 Quick Teardown and Cleanup
7:45 Windows and Davinci Resolve
9:13 Cinebench and Power Consumption
10:20 Why this makes sense as a home server
11:19 Running Proxmox without GPU
12:00 PCIe Bifurcation
13:50 Containers, VMs, and GPU Passthru
14:36 Adding more storage
15:48 Out of band Management with AMT
16:24 The potential value of this system

[davidwestra]

It doesn’t cost an ARM because it’s X86

[MarcoGPUtuber]

Hardware Haven - A seriously good channel that's affordable to watch.

Well. It's free.

[philipspedding]

Now watch as the ebay prices skyrocket over the next week 😂

[KomradeMikhail]

The PCI slot makes a lot of sense because it's a Workstation, meant for Work.
For small industries that use obscure or proprietary hardware controllers which are not economically upgradable yet.
Audio system cards for small radio stations.
Weather sensor stations.
Robotics controllers.
Etc. etc...

Notably it makes tranferring a backup off an older RAID array, to the new upgrade system extra simple.

[ohokcool]

@ 4:13 "hardware license module" is the PERFECT description for a $250 RAID controller haha cheers for that one

[JustinJ.]

Fun fact the P520 comes with windows 10 workstation edition license hard coded in the MB, eBay sellers sell them with win10 home, a few command prompts and you can pull the license key off the MB and upgrade to win11 workstation for free

[hotstovejer]

I actually have a p510. It came with a E5 v3 6 core and 32 GB of ram. I upgraded to a E5 v4 10 core and 128gb of RAM. It has 4 HDD bays with trays and there's essentially a backplane in it. It also came with a Lenovo Flex adapter (proprietary) which holds one gen 3 nvme and one SATA m.2. I added a single nvme card and it's dead silent. Running Truenas scale (passed through the sata controller) and several VMs. I can't complain. I paid $100 for it from a local seller.

[xKruzr]

holy crap, it's Skylake?! this IS a great deal! it seems like these "bargain systems" I see reviewed on YT are almost always Broadwell or older which is really rough on power-performance ratio and just performance in general. thanks for checking it out for us!

[PatipanWongkleaw]

I once had the same thought, and I once built an epyc server thinking that this is all I'll ever need.

Fast-forward to today.
I didn't realize how wrong I was...
With all the AI and LLM stuff.. one GPU turn into two then three then...

70w idle also turns into a hundred, then few hundreds.

I think I have lost the way at this point.

[dootdoot]

Literally just got mine delivered yesterday, it's an absolute unit of an affordable homeserver

[JohnStroboz]

Gotta appreciate your real world vids. It's nice to see some cool corporate stuff from time to time, but what I really care about is stuff I can personally afford and make use of.

[LivingByFire]

I bought one and turned it into a powerful workstation/media server. I put in a 10TB hard drive, an RX6600, a Wireless/Bluetooth card, and upgraded the memory to 64GB quad-channel. When I bought it, it came with a 512GB M.2 SSD. I use it for gaming, content creation, and livestream. Honestly it’s a really versatile platform.

[abdulrahmanmonad]

I seeing your content man it's always so simple and you are always humble when explaining things you are not an expert in, I have started my homelab journey recently after starting watching your content so really really appreciate it so much and up the very astonishing work 😊

[Saphykitten]

Fun fact, the p520 has a proprietary motherboard, the p520c does not, and is a standard matx only needing a 24pin to 14pin PSU adapter.

[rotors_taker_h]

On one hand: that's some lenovo proprietary junk. On the other hand, though, you can actually buy spare parts and replacement somewhat into the future and it's actually easy to find what exactly you need in most cases.

[halosam]

I've been running a P250 I upgraded for a year and a half now.

I absolutely love mine and have been recommending it to others!

[TheInternalNet]

This is the exact machine I'm considering for my new ML workstation. Might even go with the 920 for expanding memory. Thank you for the run down for this.

[voodoovinny]

From a mechanic, never torque your way to loosen a screw. Pretend you are an impact drill by applying bits of tourque and releases. Another words, pump the screw driver and you will save your bits along with strip less screws that way. You will also find out that screws and bolts break their tightness easier too.

[brockbreacher]

I got mine back in May because of another YouTube video I saw last year where they used it for a cheap "gaming" pc and immediately saw the application for it being a server, it's cool to see one of my favorite YouTubers reviewing it and answering a few questions I've had in the BIOS settings area lol

[SkywardKing]

Always love to see more people finding more uses for the thinkstation P5xx machines.