In my opinion, bang for the buck, these are just about the best servers you can get for the home server playground in 2019. The price has really dropped on these the last few years. The R710 is an 11th generation Dell server. They came out in 2009, so the oldest are 10 years old as of this writing.
I run my own website, email server, multiple (like 10) application servers, several media servers, Usenet indexer, and random other stuff on my R710. I own two of these servers, a 8 core and a 12 core (16 and 24 threads respectively). However I only run the 12 core currently.
Just covering all that so you can understand my personal use case.
I'll throw out some factoids.
Current average cost
$140-$500 depending on load out, for a full system. Some are a little less if lacking a full rack of drives or lacking big ram load outs. Some are a little more depending on where you look and if they are totally maxed out. Currently your OK paying in the $200-$300 range for a really decently loaded system.
I just paid $160 for a 12 core, Gen II system with 64G ram and two 300GB 10k 2.5 drives. I feel I paid just about right for that system. (Maybe even a little bit of a good deal)
Size
They are 2U rack servers. Be forewarned, they are BIG and they are HEAVY!!!
Dimensions (WxDxH): 17.4 in x 26.8 in x 3.4 in
Weight: 57.5 lbs
Just keep in mind they are over 2 feet long, almost 1.5 feet wide, and stand 3.5 inches tall. That might not seems like much, but once you get one in your hands, you realize just how big it really is!! And at around 60 lbs, they are pretty darn heavy!!
Cost to power
In my area, my monthly bill per R710 is about $15. They monitor their own power consumption in iDRAC so it's easy to figure. National average would likely be in the $20-25 range. But MOST of the time my server is using low CPU. While I run a lot on my server, most of it is idle 95% of the time, and I moved to a area with crappy DSL and very crappy upload. I used to have about 16 users of my media servers, some heavy. They can't use it anymore. However my power consumption was only slightly higher then. But if you are pegging out the CPU constantly, these things can hit the $75 a month range and can throw out some serious heat!
That being said, I kept my older 8 core box in my bedroom, the noise and heat was manageable as long as I kept the room below 75F.
Also keep in mind, the more ram your have, the more power you'll use. And these can take a boat load of ram! (I have 64 gigs, they max out at 288 gigs)
Heat
The R710s were a big step up for Dell power/heat wise from previous generations. I lived with one in a 12x12 ish bedroom, and while it did tend to heat up the room, it wasn't drastic. iDRAC claims it's creating about 750 btu/h. I wouldn't suggest having one in a room without A/C during the summer, but on average it raised my room temp maybe 1-2 degrees. YMMV depending on how hard you run the box. Also more ram will create more heat.
Fan Noise
As long as you keep the room below about 75F, these really aren't that loud except when you first power them on. Then it's like a jet taking off for about 30 seconds. I honestly hardly noticed the fans, the drives were far more noisy (10k drives). But if your room temp gets above 75F.... yeah, these can get REAL loud FAST!! So keep that in mind. And I mean LOUD!
Performance
Ok, so this is subjective. But honestly unless your doing some crazy stuff at home, these things are beast! The hardest I push mine is when converting video files, my 8 core could convert an 8gb movie in about 5 mins. It also had no problems trans-coding 5 1080P movies for 5 users all at once. No one even buffered once. I haven't pushed my 12 core yet, but as it's got 4 more cores, 8 extra threads, and runs a faster CPU I'm not expecting anything but improvements. More or less, I've yet to really tax these things. And I've tried. (Yes, encoding does peg it out at 100% if I'm using an encoder that can use all my cores, but it's done so quick it's not really pushing it!)
Versions
Ok, so here is what to keep in mind if you looking to buy an R710. There are other differences, but these are the main ones.
Drive config:
There are two versions, a 6 bay that takes 3.5" drives. And an 8 bay that takes 2.5" drives. If the one your looking at isn't coming with drives, make sure you order the right drives for the one your getting. Otherwise, it's mostly just a preference thing. Either way, the Dell stock RAID cards don't handle drives over 2 TB so keep that in mind. But you can of course get your own RAID cards and do what you like.
Motherboard/systems:
There are the older boards (Gen I), and then new Gen II boards. The older boards will only handle 95W processors, the newer boards will handle up to 130W processors. Keep that in mind if piecing one of these together yourself, of if you plan on upgrading. It can sometimes be hard to tell which is which in postings, so just be aware.
Other thoughts
Two CPU's sound cool. And they are. But keep in mind that an 8 core single chip setup will be faster in most cases than a twin chip 2x4 core system. Some might ask why, and it comes down to overhead in the board/bus to run both chips. I think it's generally accepted you lose about 20-30% in that overhead. So why duel chip systems? Because both then, and now, there will be a limit to how many cores they can fit on a single chip. So if you need more cores (and the really important part, more threads) the only way to do it is to have multiple chips. When these came out, 4 cores was about the max for these types of machines. So the only way to get 8 was to have two chips. Many workloads in the enterprise world run much faster with more threads vs. faster chips. So in enterprise land, more threads on slower CPU's is better than fewer threads on faster chips (to a point).
What does that mean for you, a home server tinkerer? Our workloads in non-enterprise land are much more single threaded. Overall we'll likely see better performance from a single chip system (all other things being the same), especially for things like gaming.
HOWEVER, keep in mind, my video encoding/decoding can make full use of ALL my threads. I'd likely say a top of the line 8 core single chip system running the latest and fastest RAM and BUS speeds with SSD's could out preform my 2x6 core server pretty much all around. But that system would cost $1500-$2500. Compared to my $160 R710, it's a no brainier to me. And unless I was doing constant encoding I don't think the 1-2 min difference per 1080P file would justify the extra $$$.
Also keep in mind, while most of my processes might be single threaded, I run many processes at once. And they are often doing stuff in the background, each time it goes to do something it will grab the least busy core at that moment and go do something. So when a bunch of them are doing stuff they each get their own processor to play in. And since my 12 core has 24 threads, I could have 24 different things going on at "once"! (Putting aside IO, bus, and other limitations).
I personally don't run VMs, as I have no need, but having all those cores and threads really shines for those who want to spool up a bunch of VMs. But I'm not telling you anything you don't know if your a VM power user.
Anyway, there's my .02 cents.
