I have a Poweredge T320 used mainly as NFS file server and Plex. all 8 HDD bays are full. Main storage is 4x4TB WD Red in Raid5.
However electricity prices are surging and its too power hungry to be running 24/7. I bought a replacement Optiplex 5070 with a i5-7600 cpu that I plan to supply with a couple of Exos 20TB drives, abandoning the Raid config.
As I was waiting for it to arrive, a Dell T20 (G3220 cpu) came up for sale close by for $20. I ended up buying that one as well.
Now I have to choose which one to set up as a server. I do not transcode or do any other CPU intensive tasks, so my main concern is low power use. Which one do you guys suggest I pick?
Newer CPUs will generally idle lower and be more power efficient at low loads and will stay at lower load due to higher processing power. I’d go with the i5-7600.
That said I have my NAS on a Haswell era i5 cpu and it still works well at reasonable wattage. So the T20 would still work.