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What do you mean 10 years? You can pick up a DGX-1 on Ebay right now for less than $10k. 256 GB vRAM (HBM2 nonetheless), NVLink capability, 512 GB RAM, 40 CPU
by semi-extrinsic 1y ago
What do you mean 10 years?
You can pick up a DGX-1 on Ebay right now for less than $10k. 256 GB vRAM (HBM2 nonetheless), NVLink capability, 512 GB RAM, 40 CPU cores, 8 TB SSD, 100 Gbit HBAs. Equivalent non-Nvidia branded machines are around $6k.
They are heavy, noisy like you would not believe, and a single one just about maxes out a 16A 240V circuit. Which also means it produces 13 000 BTU/hr of waste heat.
- quickthrowman 1y agoYou’ll need (2) 240V 20A 2P breakers, one for the server and one for the 1-ton mini-split to remove the heat ;)
- Dylan16807 1y agoMatching AC would only need 1/4 the power, right? If you don't already have a method to remove heat.
- quickthrowman 1y agoCooling BTUs already take the coefficient of performance of the vapor-compression cycle into account. 4w of heat removed for each 1w of input power is around the max COP for an air cooled condenser, but adding an evaporative cooling tower can raise that up to ~7. I just looked at a spec sheet for a 230V single-phase 12k BTU mini-split and the minimum circuit ampacity was 3A for the air handler and 12A for the condenser, add those together for 15A, divide by .8 is 18.75A, next size up is 20A. Minimum circuit ampacity is a formula that is (roughly) the sum of the full load amps of the motor(s) inside the piece of equipment times 1.25 to determine the conductor size required to power the equipment. So the condensing unit likely draws ~9.5-10A max and the air handler around ~2.4A, and both will have variable speed motors that would probably only need about half of that to remove 12k BTU of heat, so ~5-6A or thereabouts should do it, which is around 1/3rd of the 16A server, or a COP of 3.
- Dylan16807 1y agoWell I don't know why that unit wants so many amps. The first 12k BTU window unit I looked at on amazon uses 12A at 115V.
- quickthrowman 1y agoThat is probably just bad data entry at Amazon. I don’t ever trust the specification data on Amazon, I look for the manufacturer’s spec sheet/cutsheet. In this case, 12A is the maximum continuous load allowed on a 15A breaker. The unit itself probably uses between 900-1000w (7.5A to 8.3A), the spec sheet might say 12A to encourage a dedicated circuit for the A/C unit which then gets added to Amazon’s specs on their website.
- Dylan16807 1y agoI think I finally found an actual product page: https://bdachelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/23196026000027-BD12NWES-12-000-BTU-Inverter-Technology-Window-Air-Conditioner https://bdachelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/2319602600002... The amazon page specifically said 1354 watts, but I think that's actually for the 14300BTU model. 12000BTU is 9.72 amps. Anyway, doesn't this make my actual argument stronger? These units fit even better into a normal circuit than I thought, and make the mini-split look even worse in comparison.
- quickthrowman 1y ago4.5-5A at 240V = 9.72A at 120V It’s the same level of power consumption. I’m not even sure what you’re asking at this point, to be honest.
- Dylan16807 1y agoYou were talking about needing a second 240V 20A circuit, and you later backed that up by citing the spec sheet of 230V mini-split with a minimum circuit rating of 15A. My argument was that you do not need such a circuit.
- Scoundreller 1y agoJust air freight them from 60 degrees North to 60 degrees South and vice verse every 6 months.
- kelnos 1y agoWell, get a heat pump with a good COP of 3 or more, and you won't need quite as much power ;)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- CamperBob2 1y agoAre you talking about the guy in Temecula running two different auctions with some of the same photos (356878140643 and 357146508609, both showing a missing heat sink?) Interesting, but seems sketchy. How useful is this Tesla-era hardware on current workloads? If you tried to run the full DeepSeek R1 model on it at (say) 4-bit quantization, any idea what kind of TTFT and TPS figures might be expected?
- oceanplexian 1y agoI can’t speak to the Tesla stuff but I run an Epyc 7713 with a single 3090 and creatively splitting the model between GPU/8 channels of DDR4 I can do about 9 tokens per second on a q4 quant.
- CamperBob2 1y agoImpressive. Is that a distillation, or the real thing?
- justincormack 1y agoTesla doesnt support 4 bit float.
- kj4ips 1y agoFair warning: the BMCs on those suck so bad, and the firmware bundles are painful, since you need a working nvidia-specific container runtime to apply them, which you might not be able to get up and running because of a firmware bug causing almost all the ram to be presented as nonvolatile.
- iJohnDoe 1y agoAre there better paths you would suggest? Any hardware people have reported better luck with?
- kj4ips 1y agoHonestly, unless you //really// need nvlink/ib (meaning that copies and pcie trips are your bottleneck), you may do better with whatever commodity system with sufficient lanes, slots, and CFM is available at a good price.
- ksherlock 1y agoIt's not waste heat if you only run it in the winter.
- hdgvhicv 1y agoOpt if you ignore that both gas furnaces and heat pumps are more efficient than resistive loads.
- tgma 1y agoHeat pump sure, but how is gas furnace more efficient than resistive load inside the house? Do you mean more economical rather than more efficient (due to gas being much cheaper/unit of energy)?
- meatmanek 1y agoDepends where your electricity comes from. If you're burning fossil fuels to make electricity, that's only about 40% efficient, so you need to burn 2.5x as much fuel to get the same amount of heat into the house.
- devmor 1y agoIt’d be fun to actually calculate this efficiency. My local power is mostly nuclear so I wonder how that works out.
- tgma 1y agoSure. That has nothing to do with the efficiency of your system though. As far as you are concerned this is about your electricity consumption for the home server vs gas consumption. In that sense resistive heat inside the home is 100% efficient compared to gas furnace; the fuel cost might be lower on the latter.
- mlyle 1y agoSure, it's "equally efficient" if you ignore the inefficient thing that is done outside where you draw the system box, directly in proportion to how much you do it. Heating my house with a giant diesel-powered radiant heater from across the street is infinitely efficient, too, since I use no power in my house.
- eulgro 1y ago> 13 000 BTU/hr In sane units: 3.8 kW
- andy99 1y agoYou mean 1.083 tons of refrigeration
- Skunkleton 1y ago> In sane units: 3.8 kW 5.1 Horsepower
- ta12653421 1y agoBut ... can it run Crysis? :D
- UnnoTed 1y agoIt makes you run into a crysis
- _kb 1y ago3.8850 poncelet
- amy214 1y ago> > In sane units: 3.8 kW > 5.1 Horsepower 0-60 in 1.8 seconds
- oblio 1y agoAgain, in sane units: 0-100 in 1.92 seconds
- markdown 1y agoHow many football fields of power?
- semi-extrinsic 1y agoThe choice of BTU/hr was firmly tongue in cheek for our American friends.
- xtiansimon 1y ago> “They are heavy, noisy like you would not believe, … produces … waste heat.” Haha. I bought a 20 yro IBM server off eBay for a song. It was fun for a minute. Soon became a doorstop and I sold it as pickup-only on eBay for $20. Beast. Never again have one in my home.
- guenthert 1y agoGet an AS400. Those were actually expected to be installed in an office, rather than a server room. Might still be perceived as loud at home, but won't be deafening and probably not louder than some gaming rigs.
- yencabulator 1y agoThat's about the era my company was an IBM reseller. Once I was kneeling behind 8x1U starting up and all the fans went to max speed for 3 seconds. Never put rackmount hardware in a room that is near anything living.
- nulltype 1y ago> What do you mean 10 years? Didn’t the DGX-1 come out 9 years ago?