Best choice for homelab server? Planning for EVE-NG/GNS.

[MaribelKreiger]

Hello!
I've recently been looking to move away from my old gaming PC as my server... I've got a couple of options that I'm looking at and would love some opinions! This will be my first time buying a dedicated server.
I've spotted a Dell PowerEdge T430 Server 2x Xeon E5-2620 v3 128GB DDR4 RAM 5X 1.2TB SAS HDD for £250 / $320. This looks like quite a nice tower server, so presumably not as much of a spaceheater.
I've also seen HP DL360 Gen9 8*SFF Server 2x2680V3 128GB 2x 900GB P440ar 2x 500W PSU 4x1Gb RJ45 for £170 / $220. This is a 1U server which I fear might be extremely loud (it'll be in the room next to me, might hear it through the walls)...
Currently I'm running Unraid on my old gaming system, but I'd like to start building network labs in EVE-NG, so looking for lots of cores/memory as my current system can't hack it.
Any input is much appreciated, thank you!

[rusty725]

Well your starting point would be cpu intel e5 2699v4 x2 with ram128GB-256GB+ and 4TB ssd or nvme x2-4 (if you want to do raid).

[Espanza]

Hello!
I've recently been looking to move away from my old gaming PC as my server... I've got a couple of options that I'm looking at and would love some opinions! This will be my first time buying a dedicated server.
I've spotted a Dell PowerEdge T430 Server 2x Xeon E5-2620 v3 128GB DDR4 RAM 5X 1.2TB SAS HDD for £250 / $320. This looks like quite a nice tower server, so presumably not as much of a spaceheater.
I've also seen HP DL360 Gen9 8*SFF Server 2x2680V3 128GB 2x 900GB P440ar 2x 500W PSU 4x1Gb RJ45 for £170 / $220. This is a 1U server which I fear might be extremely loud (it'll be in the room next to me, might hear it through the walls)crossy road...
Currently I'm running Unraid on my old gaming system, but I'd like to start building network labs in EVE-NG, so looking for lots of cores/memory as my current system can't hack it.
Any input is much appreciated, thank you!

What are your primary use cases for the server?

[sean1207]

I run quite a sizable lab at home with mostly Arista's, Cisco's, and Juniper's - around 30 routers/switches & 20+ Linux (Ubuntu) servers for Multicast Tx/Rx (iperf, wireshark, smcroute)
I bought a refurb HP DL360 Gen9 with 2 x 500G SSD's, 256G RAM & 2 decent processors with 14 CPU's (28 threads) each - far less than $1000
Just in case you are local to me I'm in the Netherlands and my supplier is a great guy he on the East of the Netherlands (ships quickly and cheap)
Anyway - they are loud. I've recently moved it into the shed as I want it UP all the time. In the house I was rebooting it every morning, and shutting down in the evening.
Workstations are considerably quieter, but may only have 1 socket not 2 .. and far less flexibility . And I think less bang for the buck. Some even need a GPU based Video card even though it's a waste of time for EVE-NG - $$$
Very much depends on your individual needs !