AIO Ep7. Some Hardware Changes

HPE Gen10+ kind of disappointed me… eventually sold it on Xianyu and switched to a self-built rig.

Originally ordered an HPE Gen10+ from Amazon Germany, arrived on July 2nd, 2021.

Amazon

Did some testing—the power consumption was around 20W+. iLO 5 worked great, allowing full remote management without needing a monitor or keyboard.

The build quality was solid, and disassembly was easy. Here are a few pics. (You’re probably wondering why I even bothered connecting a monitor—yeah, fair point -w-.)

Machine photo

Machine photo

Machine photo

Machine photo

But during inspection, issues popped up.

The F10 hardware diagnostics kept throwing an error: Intel(R) PRO/1000 9.4.06 PCI-E Error Code: 60F09T-000AMP-XD3V4J-04AX03. The weird part? This machine doesn’t even have that NIC model. The system boots fine and the network works, but the error persists. Interestingly, if I only connect a display and no network cable, the error doesn’t show up.

Searched online—no relevant results anywhere. Contacted support (HPE’s local service in China is handled by H3C).

Followed their troubleshooting for days: updated IP, SPP, cleared CMOS—nothing worked. Sent countless emails…

Email

Still no resolution. Scheduled an on-site motherboard replacement—waited a whole week.

The technician spent three hours on site. The new motherboard had the same error, and it got worse—couldn’t even detect the drives. Ended up swapping back to the original board.

Finally shipped the whole unit to the Zhengzhou service center. Round trip took another week.

Final verdict: incompatibility between the NIC firmware and the latest BIOS. They downgraded the NIC firmware, and the issue was resolved. The problem has been reported to HP—waiting for an official firmware update…

During all this, other random errors popped up—iLO 5 reported Health: Critical Uncorrectable PCI-E Error Detected. Status: 0x00014000, and memory errors appeared during POST.

But both disappeared after a reboot and couldn’t be reproduced—so support couldn’t do anything.

From order to actual use, nearly two months were wasted. In the end, I was still using the original motherboard, which had previously thrown unexplained errors but wasn’t replaced.

Performance-wise, the machine was underwhelming: slow CPU, limited RAM, only four drive bays. Even running ESXi felt sluggish. After burning through all my patience, I listed it on Xianyu for 3,500 RMB. (Surprisingly, I made a small profit of a couple hundred bucks…?)

I remember the technician saying: “Home servers like this have low shipment volume. After three years on the job, this is only the second one I’ve seen. They tend to have weird issues and aren’t necessarily better than secondhand servers from online markets.”

Well, I guess it counts as a trial run with enterprise hardware. (First time using iLO, though—pretty neat.)

Eventually switched to a DIY All-in-One host. Here’s the build spec. (Power draw with two extra drives is about 50W.)

Build Spec

Next episode preview: Remember that idle SanDisk Cruzer flash drive.

Quick thoughts on component selection:

11th-gen was too pricey, so I went with 10th-gen. Motherboard: B460M Pro4—great expandability: dual PCIe x16, one PCIe x1, 6 SATA ports, 2 NVMe slots, gigabit LAN. Grabbed it on JD during a sale for 599 RMB—no-brainer.

CPU: Paired it with a 10100 (unboxed) from Taobao.

RAM: Not overclocking, so went with Lightwave—lifetime warranty, good enough.

PSU: Picked the GX450 to protect my drives. Single-rail 12V output exceeds 30A. (Lower-wattage units often have weak 12V rails—risking insufficient power during spin-up, which can damage drives.)

Case: Couldn’t afford a custom NAS mini-chassis. Went with a larger case—more drive bays, better value. No hot-swap backplane at this price, but still a solid deal. Note: needs extra case fans for HDD cooling.

PCIe expansion: Future upgrades—SAS, 10GbE, or GPU, depending on needs.

Total savings over the HPE: more than 1,200 RMB, with major upgrades in CPU, RAM, and storage capacity.

Downsides? Larger footprint, and lost iLO. But honestly, not a big deal—using a USB capture card, I can turn my laptop into a display. Works just fine.

Turns out brand-name servers aren’t always reliable… Funny how so many people online recommend the HPE Gen10+. Well, I’ve now personally stepped into that pit. Wasted a lot of time, but at least I learned my lesson.