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Ask HN: Buy a used 1U as a compiler server

by tubby12345 on 12/28/21, 7:49 PM with 26 comments

• by gvb on 12/28/21, 8:06 PM

  I'm running a decommissioned rack computer in my basement. It works good with some caveats and recommendations:

  * Buy a 2U server, not a 1U server. The 1U server fans are VERY LOUD and very annoying. The 2U server fans are still pretty loud, but more tolerable. If you are in the same room, even the 2U servers can be annoying.

  * Check the CPU benchmarks (e.g. https://www.cpubenchmark.net/). Older systems with older CPUs might not be as fast as you expect.

  * Check how much RAM the system supports and get as much RAM as possible when you buy the system. I had problems trying to add RAM sticks that had the same specs but the BIOS would not accept them because they were not identical (it apparently matched manufacturer IDs as well as timing).

  * Efficiency will be less than a new CPU; same or higher wattage with slower performance.

• by johnklos on 12/28/21, 8:40 PM

  Like others have said, the fans of a 1U are going to be LOUD. Consider a 2U.

  DDR3 and older DDR4 Xeons are cheap but power hungry and slow. Compare costs with a more modern system, like a decent Ryzen. Saving the money on the older system might not be worth it, when you take power and noise in to account.

  I bought a Ryzen 2700X on sale a couple of years ago for large compile jobs. I chose an ASRock motherboard because most if not all support ECC, and I got some ECC memory. It has been absolutely wonderful to have a machine dedicated for CPU intensive tasks.

• by bick_nyers on 12/29/21, 2:05 AM

  I agree with the other commenter who recommended a cloud solution. If not though, a 5950x will be way faster than any decommissioned unit in a similar price range. The 5950x is 16 cores around 5GHz and it's on Amazon for $770. 64GB of Unbuffered ECC RAM and an ASRock Mobo and you can do the build for $2k. You can do it cheaper too if you go to 12 cores or 32GB RAM or whatever. If you know how to overclock RAM (or learn how to use Ryzen DRAM Calculator), you can squeeze out another 10-15% performance in compile tasks.

  Here is an example build: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/MnFh68

  And 4 of these for ECC RAM: https://www.newegg.com/kingston-16gb-288-pin-ddr4-sdram/p/N8...

• by polack on 12/29/21, 12:03 AM

  When faced with the same issue I decided to just setup VPN to the office so I can offload stuff to my office machine when I’m on my laptop at home or traveling. Maybe that’s possible for you too?

• by smackeyacky on 12/29/21, 12:21 AM

  I have two servers I use regularly although I have moved them out of my house recently.

  I didn't find the fan noise or power usage bad. Startup fan noise on an HPE server is bad but with decent airflow they are pretty quiet really.

  Server specs can be different but it might work to your advantage, my HPE servers can use registered ram, are super easy to upgrade and walk all over my older i7 based laptop for compile speeds on big projects. I buy from techbuyer or ebay.

  Note that the drive arrays might be SAS rather than SATA, and windows 10 won't install on a fat multi cpu server as the license doesn't permit it, so if you are running windows you will have to install windows server instead. If you need docker like I do, it ended up being better to install debian and use qemu to run windows stuff.

  Get dual power supplies. A lot of these servers have lived in data centres and the caps in the power supplies may have silently failed, but you won't know until you try to turn it on. The power supplies are hot swap usually and run to $25 dollars so I keep one on the shelf.

  The deskside server I bought is an absolutely kick ass workstation usinga very cheap ati hd6570 and a couple of 2k monitors. Its fast (dual 6 core xeon @3 ghz), super reliable, 96gb of memory. Using a pair of hybrid drives in raid 0 for storage. The other one is a rack server on a big SSD and it is even better but less convenient as a workstation so I use it as a build machine and for hosting VMs.

  I would never go back to buying a deskside PC. I am under $1000 invested in those two beasts and to try to get the same performance you are lookung at $5000 and climbing. I recommend old servers unreservedly.

  https://www.techbuyer.com/au/

• by destevil on 12/28/21, 7:55 PM

  The noise will be simply horrendous. I bought 4 some time ago, and they sounded like a jet taking off...

• by prirun on 12/29/21, 2:02 AM

  I have a 32-core 2U system I want to sell. $250 + shipping. Supermicro 2U Server H8DG6-F 2x AMD 6272 2.1ghz 16 Core CPUs, 64GB. It has 12 drive slots but the controller (SAS) only supports 8 drives. You can probably connect the other 4 drives with on-board disk controller ports but I haven't done that. System has 2x power supplies (the quieter ones, though not what I'd call quiet).

  I added an expansion card for 2x USB3 ports in addition to the USB2 ports on the motherboard.

  I have 8x 400GB Toshiba 15K RPM hard drives for it, in drive sleds. $400 for all 8.

  I'll throw in a Happy Hacker mini keyboard or full-sized keyboard.

  If interested, my email is in my HN profile. I have the original Supermicro box with foam inserts for shipping. Pics available too - just ask.

• by pickle-wizard on 12/30/21, 9:43 PM

  As others have said rack servers are really loud. Instead look for a tower server, they are much quieter as they are often used in office environments. Something like a Dell PowerEdge T series. You'll pay more as they are rarer but you'll be happier.

  Another option is to build some. Last summer I built a couple of servers for my home lab. I went with a 12 Core Ryzen and 64GB of DDR4 RAM. I spent around a Grand each of them. ASRock Rack makes an AM4 motherboard that has IPMI. So they have remote IP-KVM and power control. It is similar to the Dell iDRAC or HP iLO.

• by mstaoru on 12/29/21, 1:59 PM

  At work we used https://distcc.github.io/ to offload large C compile jobs to our "jet" which is a 4U/8N Supermicro decommissioned machine with 2 x E5-2680v4 CPUs, 128 GB RAM, and 6x 960GB Crucial SSDs per node (224 cores total). It's linked with a Mikrotik CRS-309 10GBe switch to our main gigabit switch. The server is VERY VERY loud and idling at 500 W / compiling at almost 3 kW. The price was about US$10k for all of it. We also use it as NAS / backup for some things since it runs on ZFS raidz2. Very much worth it (using it as a team) but YMMV.

• by znpy on 12/28/21, 7:59 PM

  Keep in mind thst thise things are LOUD and they get LIKE REALLY REALLY HOT.

  Cooling is only half a problem in server world because it's assumed that you're going to run servers in a climate-controlled room.

  Also, their power draw is not negligible, especially under load.

  These are the factors that you should really keep in mind, when evaluating with respect to your specific situation.

  For example, elextric power is fairly cheap in the us but quite expensive in Europe. Your neighbours might have something to say if you live in an apartment and have server grade fans running 24/7 (*).

  If after all considerations you still want to do that, /r/homedatacenter is full of porn you might enjoy.

  (*): I know you're currently not thinking about leaving the server on 24/7... but you'll be tempted :)

• by throwaway81523 on 12/28/21, 10:09 PM

  Every time I've looked at something like that, it just hasn't been worth the hassle, and hasn't been economically competitive with getting a dedicated server on Hetzner or Hetzner auction. Those boat anchor servers on ebay will be WAY slower than a modern threadripper. Or if you only need a few hours at a time, Hetzner cloud is competitive without having to worry about preemption.

• by ussrlongbow on 12/28/21, 11:00 PM

  1. Stick with DDR4 systems, DDR3 are much slower. 2. Used to have both 1U and 2U servers at home, as people mentioned they are pretty loud, try to avoid 3. Regular commodity tower case with slots for 120 fans is best in terms of loudness/cooling capabilities 4. Try build something on commodity hardware pieces - would be easier to sell it away once you want to get rid of it.

• by toomuchtodo on 12/28/21, 11:46 PM

  What about a dedicated Hetzner or OVH server your employer would let you expense the monthly cost for as an educational expense or similar?

• by reason-mr on 1/1/22, 4:45 AM

  Will be noisy. You can pull the board and put it in a desktop case with desktop fans, but unmodified even in a garage the strongly forced airflow in a 1u compute server sounds like an aircraft taking off.

• by techgnosis on 12/28/21, 10:51 PM

  Do NOT follow through with this plan. 1U servers are incredibly loud and you will regret it every day. Plus, like others have said, any old 1U server on eBay is going to be much, much slower than anything modern. You'd be better off building a little silent desktop with an AMD in it.

• by orbz on 12/28/21, 8:06 PM

  Are you opposed to the cloud? You could get an even beefier machine on the spot market for under a buck an hour while you’re using it, then turn it down when you’re not.