It has been a little more than two months since I wrote my previous post about developing VBA Skills. A lot of things happened in the meantime, but overall I was and still I am in busy projects. I don’t complain as it is exciting in 95% of the time and I can refine my BPC skills with every passing day.

Nevertheless, in this quick post, I will explain why I am in a process of building new SAP HANA Home Training Server for BPC/BW. My old server is in Bulgaria and is reachable from any place in the world. However there are things I don’t like in the current server and therefore, it is already for sale.

The workstation is produced in 2007/2008. It has been an incredible machine for many years ever since. It still poses the performance I need, however, it is energy inefficient for the current standards. The performance/power consumption ratio is pretty bad.

The energy consumption was in the range of 400-800 watts/hr. This led to significant impact on my electricity bills in the first months when I decided to keep it running 24/7. It is loud, heavy and produces a lot of heat. Based on that I decided to assemble a PC in the UK, instead of transporting it here.

My requirements related to the new home server are:

• Energy efficient to run 24/7 (Less than 100w on full load, 30w idle)
• Decent performance (64GB of RAM and i5/i7 quad core processor)
• Silent and small so it can stay in the living room
• HTPC – Home Theather PC for Netflix or Amazon Prime

The key enabler for my requirements is the new generation of Intel processors called Skylake. It is the first non-Xeon processor generation which can handle 64GB of Memory and 16GB Memory modules. Unlike, previous time with the Dell Workstation, I will pick the parts and assemble the computer on my own.

I already ordered everything. Unfortunately, there are no mini-ITX motherboards with four slots of Memory supporting i5/i7 processors at the point of writing this post. Therefore, the SAP HANA Home Training server will be based on Micro ATX motherboard and Small Form Factor case. Below, you will find the pictures of it. Next to the case is my old iPhone 5.

Thank you for reading and stay tuned for the next blog post where I will make a video of the assembling process and later what are my first impressions of the Computer.

btw. I also ordered power consumption monitor so that I can provide you with accurate and reliable results. Until the next time :).