I7 5500U low footprint server

[Bwired]

I have replaced all my cubietrucks etc for these
Core I7 5500U Dual lan, usb3 16gb, 2x Msata, 1 sata, 4K HDMI 2.0 etc.
these are fast machines with very low power usage (15w ->), no vent cooling on which I run Windows core hyperv and have many envioinmenst running now.
Im very pleased with these. I ordered these via Aliexpress with a company called Hystou which has very good service also
They have various models and also the latest skylake processor if you want

This is the U5500 i have now running on Bwired
nl.aliexpress.com/store/product/Best-Wi ... 69871.html
nl.aliexpress.com/store/product/2016-Ne ... 12027.html

And also a much cheaper and greener Celeron version with dual lan
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/produc ... 08184.html

The U5500 and others are also available in England pondesk.com which saves you custom Tax etc:
They also have a lot of versions, check it out:
I ordered again one from http://www.Pondesk.com

http://www.pondesk.com/minipc/
pondesk.com/product/6th-Gen-Intel-I7650 ... C_MNHO-041
pondesk.com/product/Intel-J1900-4-LAN-N ... C_MNHO-022
pondesk.com/product/5th-Gen-Intel-i7550 ... C_MNHO-014

image1.jpg (88.16 KiB) Viewed 35418 times

image2.jpg (90.74 KiB) Viewed 35418 times

[Rene]

Windows?

[vincenttor]

Nice device, not sure if you can compare it to a nuc , well not in size but the power is great.
more options and it is cheaper !
I wonder how it will do when running blueiris and some ip cams.
If it get's to hot and what the power usage will be.

thanks for sharing

[Bwired]

Running Core Hyperv and multiple Lunix and windows 2012 vm's. Also sites with mysql and lots of visitors.
Mostly the machine is cold, only on heavy use it gets warm, but not hot.
only downside is that it only supports 16gb mem.
If I start the I7 5500U, a 4k display attached with Windows 10 and its doing not much its only consuming 5 watt and staying cold!

I had ESX running on this, was a lot of trouble getting the drivers right. It did not run stable enough, sometimes it freezes.
Core hyperv installed out of the box with all drivers installed the right way
End of this month Core hyperv 2016 will be released, i will try that too.

[vincenttor]

Thats great News,
pity i have build recently a server.
It is a bit bigger haha but i did choose for a "low energy cpu" Intel Core i7-6700T
but 5-10Watts is great to see
maybe ill buy one later to see if it can replace this system with my ip cams and such.

[Bwired]

nice also, but like you told much more energy
btw: Here is a picture from the inside also

IMG_1834.jpg (1.03 MiB) Viewed 35277 times

[vincenttor]

i noticed they have also a version with 6 x rs232 ports on it.
the cpu is a bit less powerful i guess.
Not that it matters anymore in my case since i have bought rs232 to ethernet boards but still it could be useful since there are still many devices that talk over rs232 or 485.

[Bwired]

After a good review of both hyperv and ESXI I decided to move everything to VMware ESXI.
I checked to diskspeed and overall speeds and found out that Esxi runs much smoother and is easier to control.

[Bwired]

The U5500 and other barebones are also available in England pondesk.com which saves you Tax etc:
check out:

http://www.pondesk.com/minipc/
http://www.pondesk.com/product/6th-Gen- ... C_MNHO-041
http://www.pondesk.com/product/Intel-J1 ... C_MNHO-022

[Bororo]

Hi Bwired,
I'm just curious which version of ESXi you are running on this nice box?
I assume its equipped with Realtek NICs which is blocked in ESXi 6.0-6.5. Did you patched original ISO with Realtek drivers?
Also, as a newbie in this area I have a question regarding VMs running on this box:
- how many virtual machiner are you able run simultaneously on your box?
- can you tell more about VM details? (Linux/Win - purpose etc)

I have similar box on my desk, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD, but just one NIC and I'm not sure if to use ESXi and install at least 1 x Ubuntu VM as replacement for my Raspi environment (only OpenTherm gateway, Domoticz, rfxrtx433E) and 1 x Windows 10 as a general purpose virtual machine.

Many thanks in advance.

[Bwired]

I'm running on esxi 6.0 which is patched for the nics, you are right!
I have also multiple machines running so I can move around with vm's very easy.
When you read this, this posting is served by one of the vm's
I have around 6 to 8 vm's running now, but I have a friend who is running 14.
I can stay low because I have more systems, believe me mine are doing almost nothing!

I have converted my Rasps, cubies etc. to UBUNTU 16.04 only a few rasp nodes (smartmeter reader) are left.
I also have Windows 2012 servers running in the VM.
Also on 1 system I have multiple USB devices redirected to different Vm's (windows & ubuntu), big advantage for esx towards hyperv
Works fine now for more then 3 months.
Regards Pieter

[kriz83]

I'm wondering what the power consumption (and heat) is like when running BlueIris with a couple of cameras

[vincenttor]

Yes same here,
especially with the hardware acceleration active.

[mhn]

I use an i5 version with two cams running 10 fps, HomeSeer and Blue Iris.

It has been a while since I measured it. However, I think it was around 12W when doing next to nothing and around 40W when busy.

Regards
Morten

[vincenttor]

You have ha enabled and d2d recording in blueiris?
What cpu percentage does it hoover around?

If busy, does it get very hot or not to much?