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Hey guys. Look at this screenshot.

https://i.imgur.com/HSmUPpt.jpg

It has two Intel Xeons 2.5 GHz, each is quad-core. Total 8 cores. (Not visible) 16GB of RAM. No HDD's included though. (But regular SATA drives work)

Now, Guess how much it costed. (The whole rig)

500? Nope. 400? Nope. 300? Nope. 200? NOPE.

$180 with shipping!


It's because it's a rack server. Dell custom built for some company. It's a few years old. (Core 2 Duo  DDR2 era) They bought them by the thousands, Used them a while... then they declare it depreciated and then sell it off. Ebay Listing URL: http://www.ebay.com/itm/271225747786 (Click the relisted URL, They have hundreds...)

Just a cool thing I thought I'd share with you guys, as I'm sure it would interest you. It does get loud though. I intend to modify the cooling system, as well create my own custom case for it, and use it as a desktop. (For fun.)

It also has one PCI-E slot, however it doesn't fit a mining-grade GPU inside the case. Does fit a regular size GPU that doesn't require external power, though.

I can also take detailed close up pictures of all the internals, if anyone is interested in seeing if this would work for their use of it.

I'm loving it. :P

Cheers!

Re~

I was going to guess... but then you told me.  It's k, I was going to guess 180$ anyways. You believe me, right?

That's because you're one of few people who are aware of such rack servers. To get that kind of performance on desktop hardware everyone is familiar with, you'd need to shell out $300 at the least.

$180? Expensive! I was going to guess you got it for free!  ;D

I believe you too Xyver :D

Careful, the PCI-e riser is only rated by Dell for 25W or 35W, depending on the configuration.

A year ago, I shoehorned HD 7750's into some Poweredge R710's and I burnt out one of the PCI-e risers. These were rated for 35W.

I've found that my 7870's draw ~140 watts of power via the PCI-E molex connectors. That leaves 10-20 to the PCI-E connector. I think I'll be fine, although It might vary with other cards.. Your best bet to tell is if your GPU works on an unpowered riser well. If it does, most goes through the PCI-E plug. Otherwise. It's probably split more evenly.

so, just what are you going to do with it? ???

Been through dozens of similar units. You'll get over the noise and heat from them. Then the issues of inconvenient OS that are required... the specs might seem amusing at first but it will wear off. You could've probably picked up 2 or 3 of these at a government surplus auction for that price, they sometimes have so many that there arn't enough auction goers to take them home, so the auctioneer more or less gives them away for free or forced into other auctioned items so that they clear the floor for the day.

Pro tip: You'll make far more money (over time) selling them as parts than you will selling them as whole. $180? That's less than the value of 4x SAS drives of *any* size alone.

I didn't really want to make money. I just wanted a fast computer. Faster than any other I've had. As for OS requirelemnts... what OS requirements? I've been running regular ol windows 7 64bit here just fine.

(Also, It was 130, but shipping costs bump it up to 180.)

Shame about the ridiculous amount of power it sucks.

You can't really mine anything with it, and unless you have some datacenter space free with free electricity or prepaid electricity that allows you to use the excess, it is pointless to install this "rig"

Might make a few litecoins.  Pointless.

Enjoy your new toy :)

I don't often say this but, what does this have to do in the BTC mining forum? even LTC hardware threads are being moved from here ;P Then again why some hardware questions are moved to the alt coin forum boggles my mind since some of the question asked are exactly the same as would be for BTC mining, so where else better to ask them?

It sucks 250 watts on full load with two HDD's, and a low profile GPU. 100 watts idle. (My mining rig draws 85 watts idle. No big deal.)


This isn't for mining. Duh. I have two 7870's for that on my mining rig. This is just for regular work. Everything other than mining. (Blender rendering, running servers, etc) And it does it damn well.

Then why is this thread in a mining forum?  Hey Mods, cleanup in aisle 3!!!

I thought it was relevant.

Is 'costed' a word in English?

Probably not, cost is the past tense of cost.... I think :P

It is now that I started using it, Sure. Language is always in flux; Changing. :P

oh sure, now you borked the language. ;)

https://i.imgur.com/WhKHnW5.jpg

Works really well. Minecraft got 100 FPS on far/fancy. I literally don't play any videogames though...

https://i.imgur.com/B3XJf64.jpg

Just ran some benchmarks. Turns out that this computer is faster than an Ivy-Bridge Intel Core i5. Slightly faster.

https://i.imgur.com/1BMeyok.png

Considering that the i5-3350P CPU alone costs $179.99, pretty much the complete cost of this rack server (including shipping), I think that's a pretty damn good deal considering the rack server came preloaded with 16GB of ram, PSU, all cabled and an entire case.

I have also ran some proper power usage tests using my Killawatt Meter. With two 7200RPM SATA HDD's and one 25-watt ATI GPU connected, The rack draws a solid 100 watts when idling. 210 watts when on full load. (Linpack benchmark.)

I expect that It can reach 300 watts if the CPU's, GPU, and HDD's are all heavily utilized at the same time. However I can not create these conditions.

I also took a photo of the motherboard if anyone is interested.

https://i.imgur.com/z1r8V7k.jpg

The mounting holes are mostly matching the standard ATX Layout except for one hole near the middle and the holes under the CPU mount.

Cheers!

Hard drives: Benchmarking tests with HD Tune, Hard Disk Sentinel, or any of the countless different disk benchmarking/testing utilities. Alternatively you could get away with doing chkdsk C: /R which will take 9999 years to complete (and on any other drives other than C:)
GPU: Stress test with miners, FurMark, or OCCT GPU tests (fullscreen)
CPUs: OCCT or any Prime number computing software

Keep in mind that when you are running a server or blade or similar custom engineered hardware with the covers off you have changed the air flow configuration from the design specifications and parts may be overheating and you might not even realize and/or they might not have any thermal monitoring. Especially when testing under load conditions like those above...

That takes far too much effort to be worth it, and Yes, I know that the case lid is required for optimal cooling. I only took it off temporarily for testing the GPU on the computer.

To everyone who mocked me for buying it. I made a KILLING using this rack server to mine primecoins since the second it was released. ;)

Now that's some great timing.

Cheers.

I would have guessed much more, cheap for the performance.

I'm sorry I can't hear you over the Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo of your server

lawl, you made my day, greyhawk

on the topic: I would sure use one rig like that in the winter.

Actually my server is quieter than the window air-conditioner I have in the room with me! Fans in it never spin up faster than the minimum speed. It has lower voltage processors so it doesn't generate much heat. (In fact, I touch the tiny heatsinks and they are only warm! O_o)

SIW (System Information for Windows) can probably show the CPU temps of those xeons (and everything else) even if you are supposed to use the server manufacturers monitoring software for that. (That software is usually annoying to use).

On the sensors tab.

All regular software works for it. I used Hwinfo but anything else that detects temps on core architecture and newer chips will work too.

Well, this server has now been sent off to a datacenter, where it will reside indefinitely. I pay $50 monthly to keep it there. with 5 ip addresses. sweet! That beats any VPS or dedicated hosting service.

Does that datacenter care about things like electricity costs? Or it's 50$ to anyone with any rig?

It's $50 as long as it's 1U. Bigger physical size means bigger cost. Anyways, I have no idea if they care about electricity costs. Probably not as long as your rig isn't pulling 2500 watts all the time. :P