Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

Question

some questions about Dell PowerEdge 2850

Aug 19, 2017 12:45AM PDT

So. I have this PowerEdge 2850 motherboard from local seller, and I've decided to make it work again. I did me some reading and found out that server motherboards are more complicated to run and set up than anything else.
But that did not stop me...
I have ordered following components:
2x Xeon 3.4GHz single-core 32-bit (<- enough for my purposes)
GD419 700W PSU
And some DDR2 RAM, which I hope should be the easiest part to install...
Is there anything more that is REQUIRED for the server to run?
Just to make it clear, I don't have any case for it, nor any buttons, but I hope that I can connect a spare one to it's pins? Or does it have a "Dell Server-Specific Button"?
Also, it does not support graphics cards, which is fine, because it hould have a basic inbuilt GPU, so I don't have to buy one. Right? Or do I?
Turns out setting up a server without actualy buying a server is way more complicated than I thought...
Any advice? Can I install linux at it? Do I need some special extension cards or is the inbuilt I/O enough?

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Answer
Re: server
Aug 19, 2017 1:05AM PDT

I would add a hard disk or SSD to it to run.
And why not download the manuals from Dell? Those should answer a lot of questions.

What do you need a server for?

- Collapse -
hdd
Aug 19, 2017 1:41AM PDT

The manual from Dell is a 2 page pdf describing technical specs. Maybe I just missed something?
I wanted to use it as a server for some lightweight games like transport tycoon or factorio.
Oh yeah, hard drive is propably a good idea Grin It should have some ATA connectors

- Collapse -
Mobo
Aug 19, 2017 8:29AM PDT
- Collapse -
Answer
Took a look and it's nothing like a normal PC.
Aug 19, 2017 8:54AM PDT

I see others have shared where the manuals are but if you were hoping to turn this into a run of the mill gaming PC, it's not made to do that.

The SCSI drives alone will have the average builder or the seasoned builder sending this to Ebay.