Hey guys! I am eyeing a DL360e G8 for a Plex server. I specifically want to use an NVIDIA Quadro P2000 for hardware transcoding.
Does anyone have experience with GPUs in this server?
Will it run noisy because of the non-HP card?
If I get an HP P2000 for ~100GBP more, will it run more quiet or will there be no difference? I mean, do HP PCIE cards make a difference for fan speed regardless of generation and official support?
Many thanks!
I have a dl360e g8 in the data center and it’s a loud server without any GPU.
Not as bad as an older poweredge but still not something I’d want at home.
Each generation seems quieter, the newest G10 I’ve racked are almost silent once they get past post.
I am not sure if the GPU will have an impact on the fan speed. It will be really loud on high load/ temp but they are relatively “quiet” under normal usage, well in a data center anyway. I am not sure if I would consider it quiet for home use, maybe if tucked away in a basement 
I did have experience with a DL360 that was loud from the moment it passed the hardware initialization phase. The fans seemed to be stuck at 100%! That was remedied with a firmware upgrade via the HP SPP but I can’t recall if it was G8 or G9.
Just an update.
I bought the server.
I rigged a PCIe power cable from an old modular PSU for a 1070 Katana card. It is very ugly and janky as I had to remove the pins from the plastic connector on the GPU end and just plug them directly into the card due to lack of space.
Everything works fine, half of the fans (those closest to the x16 slot) run at ~ 45% probably due to the unknown PCIe device.
Ugly or not once it works 
Is the unknown PCIe device referring to the GPU? If not, installing the OS through the intelligent provisioning will be the better option as it will slipstream the drivers for you, well depending on which OS you are running.
Yeah, HPE servers like to monitor all devices through HPE drivers, the iLO and their Agentless Management Service. If there is a device connected that is not using that stack (or you are missing part of the stack), then the iLO ramps the fans up because it does not know what its temperature and heat dissipation is.
It does that even when you don’t use their RAID controllers in RAID mode together with a supported drive. I had to run an old 2.5" Seagate HDD with the P420 RAID card that I was not using (I was using an SSD connected to the onboard SATA chipset) just to get the thing to see an HDD temperature to lower the fans from 30% to 18%.
Interesting I never had the opportunity of trying SATA drives on these before. Just about all the setups and preps I did where with HP addons cards etc so this is knowledge for me.
I am guessing firmware upgrade via SPP will not be much help as I doubt it would support a consumer GPU. I would assume that access to HP SPP or individual firmware will be locked behind a service contract or warranty anyway, even though you own the hardware…
I believe my server is updated to the latest SPP (P03093_001 SPPGen8.1) so yeah, no chance it would support a 1070.
Also, the P models seem to be less finicky about their PCIe devices than the E models but the P lack a PCIe power connector, so you have to use GPUs that do not require external power. There are also reports that the x8 slot on the DL360E is less finicky than the x16 and that it may not spin the fans up, or at least not spin them up that much.
I am not sure what happens if you plug in an HP branded card. My options for my Plex build were either a 1070 Katana or a P2000 because I needed a single slot card. I managed to find a Katana for a good price and preferred it over the P2000 because its more VRAM can support more simultaneous transcodes. But, an HP branded P2000 was an option and would be really interesting to see if the iLO would be able to pick it up and spin the fans down.
If you are more interested in my storage-fan speed testing here is my reddit post about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/c3pj3g/silencing_an_hp_dl360e_gen8_and_probably_more/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x