Reddit mentions of Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 70A4001MUX Intel Quad Core Xeon E3-1225v3 4GB RAM 500GB HDD Desktop Server PC

About a year ago, I was thinking the same. I built myself a FreeNAS box (C224 chipset board, Xeon CPU, ECC RAM, etc) for about the same price as a fully loaded 4-bay QNAP or Synology.

You can usually find a bargain Lenovo TS140 server (with E3 Xeon and 4GB ECC RAM) usually around the ~$300 mark, then fill it with drives. If I recall, the TS140 has 5 hard drive bays.

It is okay.
For the same price you could get 50% more cpu power with a TS140.

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkServer-70A4001MUX-E3-1225v3-Desktop/dp/B00FE2G79C/ref=pd_sim_147_5?ie=UTF8&dpID=41iMAS9dYVL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_AC_UL160_SR96%2C160_&refRID=0WDWVFQX2X7JNJSB9RWB

I just ordered one of these and love it!

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkServer-70A4001MUX-E3-1225v3-Desktop/dp/B00FE2G79C

 I plan on using Xen to become more experienced with that <br />

Xen is falling out of favor for KVM, and LVM is starting to fall out of favor for BTRFS (still early on this). You might want to give those a shot as well.

Does anyone have suggestions or have already configured a rig that has a nice balance of power, RAM, and disk for virt lab purposes?

Lenovo TS140 with E3-1225v3 for $350 + 32GB DDR3 ram for $150 + 1TB SSD for $250 = $750.

If you're not opposed to just buying and adding a second nic check out the lenovo thinkserver TS140. They're pretty cheap and i love mine. added a second nic, filled up the ram, and a hdd and still was under $500. I got the Xeon E3 but they have and i3 model too.

Edit: Weird. The price has gone up considerably. The one I got is almost twice as much on amazon now.
http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkServer-70A4001MUX-E3-1225v3-Desktop/dp/B00FE2G79C?ie=UTF8&keywords=thinkserver%20ts140&qid=1464378152&ref_=sr_1_3&sr=8-3
i belive i paid around 350

I'll recommend exactly what I got: ThinkServer TS140 with a Xeon E3. Now, that may seem a bit overkill, but for us it's been absolutely perfect doing:

• HTPC (via VLC for one-off videos, Plex for Home Theater, Netflix Windows 8.1 app, YouTube in Chrome, etc.)
  
  
• Plex Server (library is currently distributed amongst 3x 1 TB externals, and one of these, looking to get a few more of them to replace the older drives)
  
  
• Seedbox using Deluge
  
  
• Lite gaming rig using an old Radeon 6670 I had laying around collecting dust. Not going to run Crysis or anything, but it's enough to get 80 FPS in iRacing on maximum settings, Portal 2, etc.
  
  
• Transcoding (when needed) for all of our devices (three smartphones, two other desktops, five laptops, a chromebook, two tablets...).
  
  But the most important feature: It's dead silent. I mean really, with absolutely nothing else on in the room, I have to get within three feet to barely hear the CPU's fan even when it's ramped up to 100% on all four cores at 3.6 GHz, transcoding new Blu-ray remuxes to generate media index files, thrashing a few dozen torrents, and Steam hammering the bandwidth downloading games to the SSD.
  
  It's a terrific little beast. The HDD it comes with isn't too great (500 GB, 5400 RPM), so I threw an EVO 850 Pro in for Windows 8.1 Pro, Steam, and Plex's metadata, while all torrents go through a 500 GB WD Black laptop drive I had sitting around. The 4 GB of RAM it came with has been plenty so far, but I'm looking to upgrade as there have been a couple of moments when it ran dangerously low due to one roommate or another leaving Chrome open overnight with a few dozen tabs open.

I went with a ThinkServer TS140 (Passmark Score 7017). 3 1080p transcode streams on Plex.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FE2G79C?keywords=thinkserver%20ts140&qid=1448996100&ref_=sr_1_2&sr=8-2

1 x ThinkServer TS140 = $345.49
1 x 16GB USB Drive = $17.48
3 x 4GB ECC Ram = $104.61
2 x 4TB WD Red Drive = $317.38

Total = $784.96

I saw these recommended. Not sure the differences between xenon and i3

Think server
http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkServer-70A4001MUX-E3-1225v3-Desktop/dp/B00FE2G79C

This one I chose i3 + 8gb ram for 279.
http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-ThinkServer-70A4001LUX-E3-1225-Processor/dp/B00FE29IWK

Will these stream 4k?