The somewhat popular HP MicroServer series has been an excellent starting point for all sorts of home lab experimentation. They are particularly well suited for acting as a media server (using Plex, Jellyfin, or others). While CPU transcoding will suffice for a steam or two, it will heavily tax the CPU. Hence, the popularity of GPU transcoding (NVENC and QuickSync).

Thanks to HP’s design decisions, the MicroSever Gen 8 does not enable the iGPU present on many Intel CPUs. What makes this an unfortunate decision is the MicroServer Gen 8 uses the LGA1155 socket—the consumer oriented socket where most of the CPUs, including the Xeons, have integrated graphics. Instead, a Matrox G200EH handles basic VGA duties. Which is a shame, the iGPU in the Ivybridge generation CPUs is not only more powerful, it also has QuickSync for transcoding acceleration. While this is disappointing, the MicroServer Gen 8 does have a PCIe x16 slot (PCIe 2.0).

Seagate has recently updated their 2.5″ Backup Plus Portable line, redesigning the hard drive’s enclosure. The previous version was somewhat popular for drive shucking due to price, capacity, and ease of shucking. This new model, the STHP5000400, contains a 5TB 5400RPM hard drive in the 15mm tall 2.5″ form-factor. For those looking to inexpensively fill 2.5″ drive bays in a storage server/NAS, this seems to be the only choice.