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Looks like a damn expensive hobby, one which I have a certain affinity for.

• vvanders 8y ago
  Usually people buy old servers instead of building supermicro. You can pick up an R610/R710 for $2-300 and even the newer R620/R720 for $3-400. As long as you doing mind the noise + power they're not a bad deal.
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• Kadin 8y ago
  As others have said, it can be done cheaply. The electricity costs more than the hardware at least for most people's setups that I've seen. (Exception is people using stuff like RPi boards from solar panels; that's almost a sub-hobby in itself.) I run mine in a basement in place of a small utility heater. If I'm going to burn the watts anyway, might as well get some processing cycles out of it.
• astrodust 8y ago
  Be patient and wait for deals you can snipe. You can get a server that was considered high-end circa 2010 for $50. Some high-end Xeon chips are dirt cheap, like $50 each or less, as parts. Certain models were made by the millions and are still good, but got tossed as more energy efficient versions came to market. It's just not economical to use them at scale.