What are the limitations of machines like these?

snerbles 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I too have a crippling dual CPU workstation hoarding habit. Single thread performance is usually worse than enthusiast consumer desktops, and gaming performance will suffer if the game isn't constrained to a single NUMA domain that also happens to have the GPU being used by that game.

On the other hand, seeing >1TiB RAM in htop always makes my day happier.

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t0mas88 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Power usage is the main limitation of using these as a home server. They have a high idle power use.

	▲	trollbridge an hour ago \| parent [-]
		One of the reasons I use these is because it’s cold half the year and it’s not hard to basically use to supplement the heat.

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bri3d an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Very bad performance per watt and higher maintenance needs. Bad performance per watt generally means a larger formfactor and more noise as well.

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arprocter 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

On Dell you'll probably be stuck with the original mobo, and their SFFs don't take standard PSUs

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sevensor an hour ago | parent [-]

In favor of their SFFs, they get retired 10k at a time, so you might as well pick up a second one for spares.

	▲	arprocter 24 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Not a bad call, although you'll probably need to upgrade the PSU to add a GPU (if you can find one small enough to fit the SFF case)

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3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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MrVitaliy 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Just performance when compared to current generation hardware. Not significantly worse, but things like DDR4 ram and single thread performance show the signs of aging. Frankly for similar $$$ you can get a new hardware from beelink or equivalent.

	▲	Forgeties79 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Got it so basically it's one of those things you do if 1) the project interests you and/or 2) you get one dirt cheap and don't have high expectations for certain tasks