this post was submitted on 14 Nov 2024
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[–] Etterra 1 points 27 minutes ago

A super fast car is a toy, fast electronics are useful tools.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Mid-life crisis? I'm in my mid-20s!

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 hours ago

Who's gonna tell him?

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Is it really a midlife crisis when you're just buying the toys you ways wanted because you can finally afford it?

I built a ridiculous computer with RGB everything a few months back... It's dumb as hell but I always wanted one and at this point why not?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago)

Sorta. But I think the problematic part of a midlife crisis is the irresponsible reckless behavior (say unaccounted for big expenses) that affect the people around you. If you're not doing that then pop off, have fun, life is short!!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

It's not a midlife crisis!
I actually desperately need this, my current server's just not specced right for the 2 dozen VM's I still want to add.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 15 hours ago (3 children)

Meanwhile...

looks at old Thinkpad and raspi

[–] [email protected] 21 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (2 children)

I have been an IT professional since 1995. Never have I ever had a personal PC that wasn't either a refurbished laptop or some sort of Frankenstein abomination that I put together from whatever was on sale and upcycled parts.

[–] partial_accumen 11 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I have been an IT professional since 1995. Never have I ever had a personal PC that wasn’t either a refurbished laptop or some sort of Frankenstein abomination that I pit together from whatever was on sale and upcycled parts.

I've been in the game for about the same amount of time. I stopped doing that about 15 years ago when I saw that the electricity I was paying on older gear was equaling or exceeding the cost of buying newer, faster, and lower power consumption hardware.

[–] Windex007 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Power costs is a poor tax in the same way skipping the dentist and getting a root canal later is.

Also in the process of power efficiency-izing my lab. It just wasn't a feasible option before, I didn't have the means. I just paid interest via electricity.

[–] partial_accumen 2 points 10 hours ago

Do we need to update Sam Vimes ‘Boots’ Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness to Sam Vimes **‘Compute’ ** Theory of Socio-Economic Unfairness?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

I swear it folk have the shittest hardware and jankiest setups and create more problems for themselves than any user ever could.

[–] cm0002 13 points 13 hours ago

I don't even restart when installing new software that needs it, I just reload whatever service or dependent software on the fly 😎

[–] tomkatt 18 points 14 hours ago

It’s why we’re able to fix all the things. We dogfood shit setups, unsupported configurations, and weird edge cases so you don’t have to.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 14 hours ago

It is impossible to pull any enthusiast away from their 7-row Thinkpad

[–] [email protected] 13 points 14 hours ago (3 children)

You can get old servers on eBay for surprisingly little money, like this PowerEdge T410 for $200. Add some drives, install TrueNAS SCALE and you've got a good home server platform.

[–] wreckedcarzz 4 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (2 children)

I have a ThinkServer with a similar Xeon, running proxmox -> Debian, so I was looking like "huh, interesting" until I saw the internals.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck all that. Damn it Dell, quit your weird bullshit. It's just a motherboard, cpu, cooler, and ram. Slap in intake and exhaust fans. Figure it the fuck out.

E: and it better have a goddamn standard psu, too. Fuck yourself, Dell. I've seen your shit.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 hours ago

Hmm, I don't have direct experience with ThinkServers, but what I see on eBay looks like standard ATX hardware... which is not really what you want in a server.

The Dell motherboard has dual CPU sockets and 8 RAM slots. The PSUs are not the common ATX desktop format because there are 2 of them and they are hot swappable. This is basically a rack server repacked into a desktop tower case, not an ATX desktop with a server CPU socket.

[–] Benjaben 2 points 10 hours ago

The one saving grace is that their one-off custom damn shit always feels well designed, and they move a lotta units (which helps with repairs when everything is GD custom). Dunno if that's changed in recent years.

With that said I avoid them for personal use usually for the same reason, why have a desktop if you don't get the benefit of parts compatibility?!

[–] Valmond 9 points 13 hours ago

Also a space heater for the winter and some white noise so you can sleep better!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (2 children)

Isn't that a bit like buying an old truck instead of a year old Miata?

Afaik those CPUs use so much juice when idling ... sure, you dont get all them lanes or ECC, but a PC at the same price with a few year old CPU outclasses that CPU by a lot & at a fraction of the running cost (also quietly).

Just something to keep in mind as an alternative, especially when you don't intend to fill all the pcie bussy (several users with several intensive tasks that benefit from wider bus to RAM & PCI even with a slow CPU).
Ok, and you miss out on some fancy admin stuff, but ... it's just for home use ...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Yeah server hardware isn't the most efficient if you want to save power. It's probably better to get a NUC or something.

With that said my old Dell PowerEdge R730 only uses around 84 watt (running around 5 VMs that are doing pretty much nothing) The server runs Proxmox and has 128 GB of ram, two Xeon E5-2667 v4 CPUs, 4 old used 1 TB HDDs I bought for cheap, and 4 old used 128 GB SATA SSDs I also bought for cheap (all storage is 2,5 drives).

All I had to do was change a few BIOS settings to prioritize efficiency over performance. 84 watts is obviously still not great but it's not that bad.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

Sounds nice, but yes, uses quite a bit of power.

I should measure mine - I have a Ryzen 5900 (24t, 64MB ... some 20k cinebench score) as the main, and a Core 12700 (16+4t, 12MB).
(And Intel gen 7 and 2 at my patents. All of them proxmoxed.)

Never ever managed to bottleneck anything on them, not really, but got them super cheap used.

Buying anything server/enterprise that powerful would cost me a lot of moneys. And prob have two CPUs which doubles a lot of power hungry bits.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

The only reason that I have measured my server is that it has that feature built into the iDRAC. I have been thinking of buying an external power meter for years but have never bothered to do that.

Luckily I got my server for free from work. It was part of an old SAN so it came with 4 dual 16 Gbit fiber channel cards and 2 dual 10 gigabit ethernet cards. Before I took those out of the server it consumed around 150 watts at idle which is crazy.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I always recommend buying enterprise grade hardware for this type of thing, for two reasons:

  1. Consumer-grade hardware is just that - it's not built for long-term, constant workloads (that is, server workloads). It's not built for redundancy. The Dell PowerEdge has hotswappable drive bays, a hardware RAID controller, dual CPU sockets, 8 RAM slots, dual built-in NICs, the iDrac interface, and redundant hot-swappable PSUs. It's designed to be on all the time, reliably, and can be remotely managed.

  2. For a lot of people who are interested in this, a homelab is a path into a technology career. Working with enterprise hardware is better experience.

Consumer CPUs won't perform server tasks like server CPUs. If you want to run a server, you want hardware that's built for server workloads - stability, reliability, redundancy.

So I guess yes, it is like buying an old truck? Because you want to do work, not go fast.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Hey! What Thinkpad do you use?

I use a W520.

[–] Valmond 2 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

Are you supposed to only have one thinkpad and one thinkcentre??

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 12 hours ago

W520 is still an amazing machine. I have been dailying a t480 for the past few years since I needed a bit more power for running VMs and stuff.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 14 hours ago

I hate this meme and yes absolutely

[–] draughtcyclist 8 points 11 hours ago

Why not both? My homelab supports car related activities.

Probably why I don't have the Porsche though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Me who finds really cheap eBay hardware:

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 hours ago

Me who digs stuff out of e-waste bins in office building parking garages.

[–] denisde4ev 8 points 13 hours ago

makes same sound

Gento fans go brrrrr

[–] mojofrododojo 0 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

at least a home lab can do things. people who's entire social life and personality are dedicated to internal combustion bullshit are depressing. vrroooom vroom vroooooom is not a replacement for actually having a life.

I love the self identifying vrooom vrooooooom downvotes rofls. you guys need to find a better hobby.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

You DON'T unDerSTAND I must go vrrroom vrrroom on city streets regardless of pedestrian safety or my wife will remember my dick doesn't work.

[–] mojofrododojo 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

the wife left him years ago lol....

[–] [email protected] 5 points 13 hours ago

I watched my father go this way and I shan’t let it happen to me! I’ve bought a motorcycle like a normal fat, middle-aged man.

[–] NegativeLookBehind 8 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

I have 4 DL360s with 96GB RAM each to run a K8s cluster with a handful of containers

[–] MsPenguinette 22 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (3 children)

I don’t know who needs to hear this, but your internal use only web-app for syncing your garage door with your media sever don’t need all that

[–] [email protected] 17 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

YOU DONT KNOW ME

[–] slazer2au 5 points 13 hours ago
[–] cm0002 3 points 13 hours ago

Yea! He just needs a single dual proc server with 1TB of RAM like mine instead!

[–] partial_accumen 8 points 13 hours ago (3 children)

I have 4 DL360s with 96GB RAM each to run a K8s cluster with a handful of containers

If someone is paying you to host those and covering your costs, go wild! However, as a hobby you may be spending $925/year or more for electricity to run those in the Midwest. $1,387 if you're living in Boston, $1,850 if you're living in California.

In one year you may have been able to buy more new power efficient hardware from just what you're spending on juice.

[–] slazer2au 3 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I am sure there are people who spend more than that in a year on their own hobbies.

[–] partial_accumen 5 points 12 hours ago

My point is, you can possibly spend the same money and get better hardware that isn't so power hungry and have a better experience with your hobby.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Curious how you calculated that? What system load is it based on? Idle? Max?

[–] partial_accumen 1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Curious how you calculated that? What system load is it based on? Idle? Max?

Very much an estimate because OP didn't mention what generation DL360 they had, how many CPUs, drives, etc. So I assumed 120W continuous 24/7/365 consumption which is pretty low. Assuming 22 cents per KWh for midwest, 33 cents/KWh for Boston and 44 cents/KWh for California.

OP is likely drawing much more than my estimate.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

Seems realistic. Thanks for the details.

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