3 ms·

I was honestly shocked at just how much compute you get for very little money on enterprise surplus servers. $150 on eBay for a dell R620, two 16-core Xeons and

• crote 2y ago
  The problem is size, power consumption, and noise. A Raspberry Pi is going to consume about 5W, and depending on your choice of case might not even have a fan at all. I literally bolted mine to the wall of a small utility closet - out of sight, out of mind. A Dell R620 consumes about 100W at best, but more realistically 200W. Where I live that's $650 in electricity per year. It generates enough heat that you don't really want to stick it in a ventilation-less closet, and it's big enough that I'd have a hard time fitting it anyways. Worst of all, those tiny 1U fans are going to be screaming in the summer, so I really don't want a small quarter-height rack in my living spaces either.
  • utensil4778 2y ago
    My house is pretty old, so it has a cold cellar under the porch. It was originally intended to keep canned goods cool, I've never seen it get to 30°C, even in summer. It's also out of the way enough that I can close the door and the howling fans don't bother us in the rest of the house. Yeah, the power use is a concern, but it's well within my hobby budget. I wish I'd gone for a bigger unit with proper 3.5" drive bays, but this is what I got. Normal load is something around 100-200W. One day I'll upgrade to a more efficient machine, but I'm happy with this for now.