5 ms·

Same, the bang for buck on a 5yo server is insane. I got an old Dell a year ago (to replace our 15yo one that finally died) and it was $1200 AUD for a maxed out

by taneq 11mo ago

Same, the bang for buck on a 5yo server is insane. I got an old Dell a year ago (to replace our 15yo one that finally died) and it was $1200 AUD for a maxed out recently-retired server with 72TB of hard drives and something like 292GB of RAM.

PunchyHamster 11mo ago
Just not too old. Easy to get into "power usage makes it not worth it" for any use case when it runs 24/7
- dpe82 11mo ago
  Maybe? The price difference on newer hardware can buy a lot of electricity, and if you aren't running stuff at 100% all the time the calculation changes again. Idle power draw on a brand new server isn't significantly different from one that's 5 years old.
- monster_truck 11mo ago
  Seriously. 24/7 adds up faster than most realize! The idle wattage per module has shrunk from 2.5-3W down to 1-1.2 between DDR3 & DDR5. Assuming a 1.3W difference (so 10.4W for 8760 hours), a DDR3 machine with 8 sticks would increase your yearly power consumption by almost 1% (assuming avg 10,500kWh/yr household) That's only a couple dollars in most cases but the gap is only larger in every other instance. When I upgraded from Zen 2 to Zen 3 it was able to complete the same workload just as fast with half as many cores while pulling over 100W less. Sustained 100% utilization barely even heats a room effectively anymore!
  - nish__ 11mo ago
    Wake on LAN?
    - darkwater 11mo ago
      Then you cannot enjoy some very useful and used home server functions like home automation or NVR.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - blackenedgem 11mo ago
    The one thing to be careful with Zen 2 onwards is that if your server is going to be idling most of the time then the majority of your power usage comes from the IO die. Quite a few times you'd be better off with the "less efficient" Intel chips because they save 10-20 Watts when doing nothing.
  - ThatPlayer 11mo ago
    A similar one I just ran into: my Framework Desktop was idling @ 5W more than other reported numbers. Issue turned out to be the 10 year old ATX PSU I was using.
- taneq 11mo ago
  To be clear, this server is very lightly loaded, it's just running our internal network services (file server, VPN/DNS, various web apps, SVN etc.) so it's not like we're flogging a room full of GeForce 1080Ti cards instead of buying a new 4090Ti or whatever. Also it's at work so it doesn't impact the home power bill. :D

by taneq 11mo ago

PunchyHamster 11mo ago

Just not too old. Easy to get into "power usage makes it not worth it" for any use case when it runs 24/7

dpe82 11mo ago
Maybe? The price difference on newer hardware can buy a lot of electricity, and if you aren't running stuff at 100% all the time the calculation changes again. Idle power draw on a brand new server isn't significantly different from one that's 5 years old.
monster_truck 11mo ago
Seriously. 24/7 adds up faster than most realize! The idle wattage per module has shrunk from 2.5-3W down to 1-1.2 between DDR3 & DDR5. Assuming a 1.3W difference (so 10.4W for 8760 hours), a DDR3 machine with 8 sticks would increase your yearly power consumption by almost 1% (assuming avg 10,500kWh/yr household) That's only a couple dollars in most cases but the gap is only larger in every other instance. When I upgraded from Zen 2 to Zen 3 it was able to complete the same workload just as fast with half as many cores while pulling over 100W less. Sustained 100% utilization barely even heats a room effectively anymore!
- nish__ 11mo ago
  Wake on LAN?
  - darkwater 11mo ago
    Then you cannot enjoy some very useful and used home server functions like home automation or NVR.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- blackenedgem 11mo ago
  The one thing to be careful with Zen 2 onwards is that if your server is going to be idling most of the time then the majority of your power usage comes from the IO die. Quite a few times you'd be better off with the "less efficient" Intel chips because they save 10-20 Watts when doing nothing.
- ThatPlayer 11mo ago
  A similar one I just ran into: my Framework Desktop was idling @ 5W more than other reported numbers. Issue turned out to be the 10 year old ATX PSU I was using.
taneq 11mo ago
To be clear, this server is very lightly loaded, it's just running our internal network services (file server, VPN/DNS, various web apps, SVN etc.) so it's not like we're flogging a room full of GeForce 1080Ti cards instead of buying a new 4090Ti or whatever. Also it's at work so it doesn't impact the home power bill. :D