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gck1yesterday at 10:39 PM1 replyview on HN

I sit next to my 4U server with all enterprise components apart from fans - these are consumer grade.

I had to mod the chassis slightly (with just pliers, tape and random inserts) to fit these fans in there, and add fans in front to push the air in. The PSU that came with it was obnoxiously loud, but thankfully, Supermicro has a quiet version that I can't even hear. Even if SM didn't have this PSU, I could have easily modified the PSU and fit some noctuas in there without any issue or safety concerns - like I did with my enterprise grade Mikrotik switch that also had obnoxious fans by default.

I even have an enterprise grade UPS that is dead silent when it's not running on battery power (I swapped the fans there too).

I essentially try to buy enterprise gear whenever possible. Not only is it usually much better than the consumer alternative, but it also is frequently much cheaper too because of second hand market. Before AI sucked the soul out of the hardware market in general, you could have bought enterprise SSDs that had life expectancy - TBW - measured in petabytes, and MTFB - practically never - for half the price of the top consumer SSD that had TBW measured in tens of TB and MFTB of yesterday.

And the entire rack is just slightly more louder than the PC I was using.

The only consumer grade computer at my home is my MacBook and my phone.


Replies

lmzyesterday at 11:13 PM

Enterprise SSDs are all that. Just make sure you power it up. For data retention without power the requirements are 3mo for enterprise vs 1yr for consumer grade.