Strangelet

As a longtime data hoarder, I hope to have a petabyte in my living room by 2025 or so. Until we have 30TB disks, that'll likely require 2x 24-bay servers (a single 36-bay can do it with 28TB disks). I'll thus likely acquire an additional 24- or 36-bay disk shelf to go along with this server, especially as I now own a rack. Assuming $250 each, every 24 drives represent a $6000 outlay. 48 bays with 21TB disks represent just over a petabyte.

I want it watercooled. I want it silent. I want it to consume less than a kilowatt. I want redundancy on everything. I want a P-Bomb, and I want to spend less than fifteen thousand dollars on it.

All prices listed include any tax and shipping.

As delivered

A diskless but otherwise complete 8048B-TRFT 24x3.5" 4U system was purchased off ebay in 2022 for $1457 from UNIXSurplusCom, who were overall pretty straight.

• Supermicro SC848XTS-R3240BP chassis
• Supermicro X10QBi motherboard with Intel 602J chipset, 4x PCIe 3.0x16, 7x PCIe 3.0x4
• 4x Supermicro PWS-1K62P-1R 80+ Platinum 1620W PSUs in 2+2 configuration
• Supermicro AOM-X10QBi-A I/O card (dual 10Gbps + VGA)
• 4x Intel® Xeon® E7-4850 v2 2.3GHz CPUs
• 3x 80mm FAN-0148L4 rear exhaust fans
  • Nidec 80x80x38mm 62.5 dBA, 116.5 CFM, 1.95A
• 4x 92mm FAN-0146L4 fans
• 24x 3.5" MCP-220-00075-0B trays (one with dead LED)
• BPN-SAS3-846EL1 12Gbs SAS3 backplane
  • upgraded by vendor from BPN-SAS-846A 12Gbps SAS2 backplane
• 8x X10QBi-MEM1 memory boards
• 16x 16GB DDR3 DIMMs
• MCP-290-00057-0N rail set

Changes

The most important thing was to reduce the quite intolerable 81dBA acoustic footprint of the server as received. I also wanted to hit 1TB of DRAM, up from the original 256GB. I needed fast NVMe for / and /home (though nothing more than PCIe 3.0, as that's all the motherboard supports). Finally, the entire purpose of this server was to move my hard drives out of my workstation. With 24 bays, I'd need (unavailable) 42TB disks to hit a full p-bomb, but a half-P is doable with 21TB disks.

Replacements (newly purchased)

• Replaced PSUs with 4x Supermicro PWS-1K28P-SQ "SuperQuiet" 80+ Platinum 1280W PSUs ($197)
• Replaced dead tray with a new one ($15)
• Replaced 3x Nidec Ultra Flow rear fans with Noctua NF-A8 chromax.Black ($63)
• Replaced 4x with Noctua NF-A9 chromax.Black ($86)

Additions (newly purchased)

• 8x 32GB Samsung PC3L-10600L DDR3 ($218)
• 4x 32GB Samsung PC3L-14900L DDR3 ($108)
• 4x 32GB Samsung PC3L-10600R DDR3 ($125)
• 2x Bejavr M.2 PCIe cards ($23)
• GLOTRENDS U.2 PCIe card ($23)
• 2x Samsung 980 1TB M.2 2280 PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs ($175)
• USB 3.2 PCIe card
• USB 3.0 powered hub

Additions (from stores on hand)

• Intel 750 400GB U.2 PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD
• 16x Seagate Exos 18TB 3.5" SATA3

TCO

I bought an APC NetShelter VX secondhand to house this monster, though that is not included in the TCO. Similarly, there are several hundred dollars of watercooling expenses (4x waterblocks, a MoRa-3, an EKWB Dual XTOP D5...) that I've not bothered to include. Altogether, they would add about another thousand to the bill.

• Original: $1457
• Replacements: $197 + $15 + $63 + $86 = $361
• Additions: $218 + $108 + $125 + $23 + $23 + $175 = $672

Total: $2490