I have the opportunity to purchase a computer for my homelab with the idea to expand. the options i am going to mention below fall within budget. Both options are refurbed equipment. I am currently using xcp-ng on my maxed out y540(2tb nvme, 1tb ssd, 64GB RAM, 6c/12t). The current setup has 2 Over-provisioned vCPU’s when all the servers are running at once.
OPTION A.
1x Dell Optiplex M70s MT, with 14cores/20threads with RAM expandable to 64 GB
OPTION B.
2x Lenovo Thinkcentre M70s MT with 6cores/12threads with RAM expandable 128GB / each.
Would you go with the Dell for the cores but limited to memory, or would you go with the 2 thinkcentre’s with ability to expand the RAM later on.
Apologies for the silly question.
The main thing is how much electricity you’re looking at using. How many Watts do you have budgeted?
The Dell for sure.
You’d likely be limited by CPU before you can use 128GB of memory on the Lenovo.