What's the best server hardware deal at the moment?

Not_Oles

Over there, in my MetalVPS thread, @somik said:

Now with falling price of server grade hardware, it's cheaper to buy. . . .

Are server prices really falling?

What's the current cost of a great deal to buy a server in the US + colo? Something with server grade hardware, but otherwise somewhat like the i9-13900 I have from Hetzner (64 GB DDR5 ECC, 2 x 1.92 TB NVMe Gen 4, 1 Gbps unlimited) for € 89.00/month?

I don't have a server in the US at the moment. A US location with good connections to Asia would be nice.

somik

@Not_Oles said:
Over there, in my MetalVPS thread, @somik said:

Now with falling price of server grade hardware, it's cheaper to buy. . . .

Are server prices really falling?

What's the current cost of a great deal to buy a server in the US + colo? Something with server grade hardware, but otherwise somewhat like the i9-13900 I have from Hetzner (64 GB DDR5 ECC, 2 x 1.92 TB NVMe Gen 4, 1 Gbps unlimited) for € 89.00/month?

I don't have a server in the US at the moment. A US location with good connections to Asia would be nice.

Dunno about US but you can get a Xeon E5 2683 v4 + 64 GB DDR4 ECC Ram + Motherboard at 300 USD from china. Get a basic GFx card for 50 USD, 2x 1 TB nvme SSD at 100 USD, power supply at 50 USD, workstation case at 70 USD, total comes up to 570 USD for a full spec workstation PC.

FYI, the CPU and RAM will be used, but rest of the parts are brand new. Motherboard chipset will be used but motherboard itself will be new with 1 year warranty.

Oh, btw, in SG you can get a max of 2x 1Gbps lines to your house. Yes, I do need to have 2 separate routers, but this is great for separating server network from home network.

ralf

@Not_Oles said:
Over there, in my MetalVPS thread, @somik said:

Now with falling price of server grade hardware, it's cheaper to buy. . . .

Are server prices really falling?

What's the current cost of a great deal to buy a server in the US + colo? Something with server grade hardware, but otherwise somewhat like the i9-13900 I have from Hetzner (64 GB DDR5 ECC, 2 x 1.92 TB NVMe Gen 4, 1 Gbps unlimited) for € 89.00/month?

I don't have a server in the US at the moment. A US location with good connections to Asia would be nice.

I built something based on AMD 7800 based year. Processor and motherboard now about £500, 2 x Samsung 980 PRO 2TB £400, 64GB RAM (not ECC) £125, case and PSU £150. So roughly a year of paying for your Hetzner box would buy you something comparable in spec, but no network.

EDIT: I know that this processor isn't classed as server spec, but it's widely used for VPS and at Hetzner, so it seems somewhat fair.

Here in the UK, depending on location it's reasonable to get symmetric 940Mbps fibre for about £45 per month, but obviously the ISP probably won't take kindly if you max it out. Most people are already paying their home internet though. In Singapore, given that commercial data is so expensive, I can definitely see the value proposition in hosting at home.

Personally, I wouldn't put other customer's websites behind a residential connection for the simple reason that the SLA is usually "hopefully it'll be fixed sometime" if anything goes wrong. If you and your customers can live with that, then it's not a terrible idea, especially if it's the backup solution rather than the primary.

somik

@ralf said:
Here in the UK, depending on location it's reasonable to get symmetric 940Mbps fibre for about £45 per month, but obviously the ISP probably won't take kindly if you max it out. Most people are already paying their home internet though. In Singapore, given that commercial data is so expensive, I can definitely see the value proposition in hosting at home.

In SG, the ISP dont mind if you max out their connections. They only mind if you download torrents. Webhosting is in fact encouraged, and they charge only S$ 2.50 for fixed IP on top of the S$ 60 for 2x 1Gbps internet.

@ralf said:
Personally, I wouldn't put other customer's websites behind a residential connection for the simple reason that the SLA is usually "hopefully it'll be fixed sometime" if anything goes wrong. If you and your customers can live with that, then it's not a terrible idea, especially if it's the backup solution rather than the primary.

There are strict laws in SG against contents. So best to use for personal websites/servers/VMs. That is what I do. All servers hosts my personal websites and contents.

benz

@Not_Oles said: Something with server grade hardware, but otherwise somewhat like the i9-13900

There is no (reasonably priced) server processor as fast as a 13900 single core.
What do you actually need (performance at any cost, price/performance sweetspot, PCIe lanes, small form factor and so on) and what's your definition of "server grade hardware"?

somik

@benz said:

@Not_Oles said: Something with server grade hardware, but otherwise somewhat like the i9-13900

There is no (reasonably priced) server processor as fast as a 13900 single core.
What do you actually need (performance at any cost, price/performance sweetspot, PCIe lanes, small form factor and so on) and what's your definition of "server grade hardware"?

There is not much reason to stick to single core when it comes to servers. It is all about multi core and multi threaded operations. While a 13900 is a good processor, Ampere's Altra Max 80 Core Arm CPU beats it hands down and then some...

FYI, the Intel 13900k has a geek bench score of "24,223" while Altera Max 80 gets "44,425", while being an ARM CPU...

benz

@somik said: There is not much reason to stick to single core when it comes to servers.

We have no idea what kinda application he intends to run - can't judge based on that so working with the "somewhat like the i9-13900" we've got.

@Not_Oles specify exactly what you're looking for so we don't have to poke in the dark if you want fitting recommendations.

somik

@benz said:

@somik said: There is not much reason to stick to single core when it comes to servers.

We have no idea what kinda application he intends to run - can't judge based on that so working with the "somewhat like the i9-13900" we've got.

@Not_Oles specify exactly what you're looking for so we don't have to poke in the dark if you want fitting recommendations.

Given almost all applications now support multi threading, unless he is running single thread bench-marking software, multi core approach is the default for servers. But either way, it all depends on the usage, budget, and performance expectations.

dwight

I guess you need a server in the west coast. A server with similar specs will cost more in the west coast than EU. Also Asia optimized bandwidth ain't cheap