I’m looking to pick up a low cost server to use for my burgeoning home lab. Something to throw Proxmox onto and run a few VMs. I like the look and cost of refurb’d HP Elitedesk 800 G3/G4s on eBay, especially because they have a PCIe slot for a 10GBe SFP card. But I also have a few HDDs I was hoping to throw in for storage. Can the HPs be case swapped into something 3 or 4U short-depth and handle storage as well, or would another machine be a good choice? Hoping to keep the total (PC + case) under $250-300.
Thanks!
These boxes have limitations. Disk bays are one of those limitations. You get one and maybe two 3.5 bays tops. You can add a HBA and external drives, but then no 10Gb networking. What is your use case that needs 10Gb? Could you live with 2.5G?