Gibson Upgrade Chronicles – Part 2
THE HARDWARE HAS LANDED. Well some of it anyway, and I was ready to build but… (there’s usually a but with IT projects). There’s some stuff I forgot/overlooked/got blindsided by.
1: Since I bought single socket servers, I forgot about the CPU heatsinks.
2: The single socket servers don’t have fans in front of the empty sockets. I’m going to need to fill these, otherwise the fan RPM will go mental to compensate for the missing fans.
3: One server had a missing CPU/RAM airflow shroud.
4: Missing drive blanks (cosmetic, but that stuff really annoys me).
5: Missing PCI slot blanks (again, cosmetic).
6: I knew these servers came with no disks, but I wasn’t sure if I could re-use my R730 disks. Unfortunately they use a different sled so I may as well get some new disks.
Updated BOM:
| Description | Price AUD |
| 2x Dell R640 – Single Socket Xeon Silver 4114 / 128GB RAM / No Disks | $1,700 |
| 4x Intel Xeon Gold 6262V (AliExpress) | $600 |
| 2x 128GB DDR4 2666 Upgrade Kits – 4x32GB (eBay) | $470 |
| 2x 2 Port 25Gbit rNDC NIC (eBay) | $60 |
| 4x SFP28 DAC Cables (eBay) | $130 |
| 2x Arctic MX-6 Thermal Paste (eBay) | $30 |
| 2x R640 CPU Heatsinks (eBay) | $60 |
| 2x R640 Fans (eBay) | $50 |
| 4x 200GB Dell Enterprise SSDs – 2x R1 for ESXi (eBay) | $110 |
| 4x R640 Drive Sleds (eBay) | $50 |
| 1x R640 Airflow Shroud (eBay) | $50 |
| 8x Disk Slot Blanks (eBay) | $50 |
| 5x PCI Slot Blanks (eBay) | $15 |
| TOTAL | $3325 ($1687.50/server) |
I’ll still need 4x more fans but I don’t really want to pay the going rate of ~$50-60AUD each. I found 2 for <$10USD each + postage but that’s not enough to fill every slot so I’ll just set up a price alert for these to buy them on a dip. I’ve got enough to get at least one server up so that can cover me in the meantime.
So… Typical IT Project, over budget (+$335) and over schedule. Thankfully it’s still a good price per server compared to what’s around on eBay.
Stay tuned for part 3, finalizing the hardware build, ESX installation and cutover.