[Paul Hubbard]

Hey Jonas; Too bad the server was sold, but I wouldn’t give up. There are deals to be had out there on very powerful used machines. The particular one I bought had a couple of ‘limitations’ that I knew about going in – not with the machine itself – everything works beautifully. But it is only a 1U height rack model which is not a problem in itself, but it was a challenge to find an additional video card – one that would be good enough and fit. Basically, it came down to some compromises and for myself, budget. When doing editing, I think we’re better served with 2,3,4U units or a tower, but they tend to be twice or more as expensive. With the larger cases, it’s easier to add in various cards. For instance, most servers do not come with any kind of audio chip built in. Since this isn’t my main editing station (I use it for rendering and the disk arrays), the answer was a video card with HDMI output (just for basic sound). Another issue with mine is that the built-in disk array only accepts six 2.5″ drives. It came populated with small high end 15k SAS drives which I swapped out for larger capacity SSDs. That gave me a much larger (and ultimately faster) array with less heat and noise. My main storage arrays are in a separate SAS enclosure attached to the server. I not only reused the 2.5 SAS drives in the external SAS, but added much more capacity and redundancy as well. It took a bit of work and planning to get this all together, but in the end, as I wrote earlier, I ended up with a powerful machine that meets my immediate needs and going forward, the next couple of years as well, for about 1/3 $$$.
Good luck and happy hunting. You should be able to find something that will work for your situation.

Best,
Paul

[Paul Hubbard]

@ Jonas; I think the people on this thread have contributed many thoughtful posts.

I did exactly what you’re thinking about doing. I bought a used Dell server with dual Xeons, 24 gigs RAM, and a nice disk array from a reputable refurbish outfit – ridiculously cheap.
After I spent some time setting it up, I’ve been quite happy with it. It renders quite a bit faster than my, admittedly old, i7 work station.
This older Dell server is very stable and it will run almost any 64bit OS. You don’t necessarily have to spend $1200 on a server license from MS – depends on how big your org is and what your usage is.

To my mind, it’s all a balance between $$$, immediate needs, future proofing, and support (both hardware and software). In my experience, most hardware today is fairly bullet proof. Cooling seems to be the most troublesome (fans, pumps failing). I’ve used main boards from several manufacturers over the years (including an Abit way back!) – all based on Intel chips – and have not had a chip failure yet. HDDs? Of course – they fail occasionally as do the fans and cooling pumps. Setting up a good disk array with solid redundancy is what I’ve concentrated on. I think that with today’s 6 core i7s, a good GPU, and RAM, you’re going to find you have plenty of horsepower. The traditional bottlenecks are still with storage, although I saw a video where someone hooked up 24 1 gig SSDs in a large array and that disk setup finally over saturated the processor, RAM, serial bus capacity.
On the software end, Adobe CS seems to be good and relatively stable. I’m not too happy with their decision to go with subscription based software which messed up the upgrade paths for a lot of people, but that’s the where it’s all headed now.

Considering that I spent about 1/3 $$$ on the used server (and setting up the additional redundant disk arrays), I’m set for the next couple of years. Yes, at some point, I will have to spend a huge chunk of $$$ for a system that has the latest and greatest hardware, but for now and for my specific needs, the used dual Xeon setup is working quite well.