places to find inexpensive 1U servers

H

HvyMtl

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 3, 2003
Messages
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Ok,

I have a friend of mine who wants to run a gaming community. He wants to own the box, and not buy each individual game "server" through a provider.

So, anyone know of a few places where one can find good used or refurbished 1U rackmount servers? Inexpensive, and not old. (Think 64 bit and can handle more than 8gb ram.)
 
HvyMtl said:
Ok,

I have a friend of mine who wants to run a gaming community. He wants to own the box, and not buy each individual game "server" through a provider.

So, anyone know of a few places where one can find good used or refurbished 1U rackmount servers? Inexpensive, and not old. (Think 64 bit and can handle more than 8gb ram.)
Click to expand...

Ebay and craigslist are good starters.
 
Try looking on Craigslist for local businesses that are upgrading their servers. A lot of companies upgrade every few years or so, normally after support agreeements run out. Servers made 3-4 years ago will easily be 64-bit and take 8GB+ of RAM
 
You'll probably be able to find plenty of HP and Dell servers. Plenty of HP DL 165's and DL320/360's out there to grab cheap on Ebay.
 
Gah, Ebay. No offense, but that is like telling me to go "google it." Ebay is not what it used to be (and neither is google...)

Any other places, such as forums, or non-ebay sellers to recommend?
 
HvyMtl said:
Gah, Ebay. No offense, but that is like telling me to go "google it." Ebay is not what it used to be (and neither is google...)

Any other places, such as forums, or non-ebay sellers to recommend?
Click to expand...

Computer forums? Newspaper forsale section?
 
Ebay is likely to be your best bet. Otherwise, if you don't want to deal with shipping, Craigslist and other local for-sale places may work out. You're dealing with servers though so Ebay may be the most likely place as sellers will probably want to reach the highest possible user base to help ensure their servers get sold.

If nothing else, check Ebay for sellers that also sell outside Ebay. You may find alternatives that way.
 
I've purchased a 1U supermicro rackmount, dual quad 2.5GHz Xeons and 8GB of RAM for two C-notes from eBay, they have a lot of product on there. You can probably find one with 16GB for nearly the same price
 
Thanks for the geeks.com reference.

Any more like this? Any forum links as well?

Craigslist where I live, sadly, is a bit... off.

And Ebay is a mere shadow of its former self.
 
HvyMtl said:
Thanks for the geeks.com reference.

Any more like this? Any forum links as well?

Craigslist where I live, sadly, is a bit... off.

And Ebay is a mere shadow of its former self.
Click to expand...

As much as you are crying about ebay, it is your best bet.

There is nothing wrong with ebay when buying from reputable sellers.
 
Hagrid said:
Computer forums? Newspaper forsale section?
Click to expand...

/says to check computer forums
//is on a computer forum

no, no; i kid.

ebay is generally my go-to for this stuff, as much as it does suck sometimes. it's better if you're in/near a major city, because you can save a fair amount of cash not having to ship the heavier stuff.

i've still got my eyes peeled for a server cabinet for sale in my area (only one at the moment, and it's massively deep for my needs).
 
Dfsdirectsales.com tends to have a bunch of refurbed 1U servers that have come off lease. I've been tempted to grab one for awhile, but I have to give my wife justification, first.
 
You're going to need to consider your requirements when looking for older servers right now. There's tons of Core2 Xeon era crap out there for cheap now, but they'll all need FB-DIMMs. Adding memory will be expensive, and they suck down a lot of power.

If you're colo'ing at a place that charges you for power a server loaded up with FBDIMMs is a bad choice. If that's the case look into some early generation nehalem servers, Dell R410s and similar can be pretty cheap, especially if you add your own processor and memory. DDR3 is massively cheaper than DDR2 FB-DIMMs.
 
How many of these servers do you need? If it's more than a couple, it may be worth your while to look at the nearest 'big city' craigslist and simply drive to pick them up instead of getting stuck with shipping costs. As an example, I'm near Seattle, and there are several rackmount servers available for very cheap.
 
Dfsdirectsales.com has some fairly often. They're off-lease Dells from businesses. Usually very cheap for what you get.
 
Why not build your own box? You can find parts and even almost complete systems on the for sale forums here and various other forum sites such as overclock.net.

Most have more current parts than craigslist, and people are more in touch with reality in terms of pricing here. I've seen old servers hardly worth $200 for sale on craigslist for over $500. But then again, looking around will be your best bet. Nobody can just give you the magic site or deal, as it takes some treading to find that special deal.
 
HvyMtl said:
Ok,

I have a friend of mine who wants to run a gaming community. He wants to own the box, and not buy each individual game "server" through a provider.

So, anyone know of a few places where one can find good used or refurbished 1U rackmount servers? Inexpensive, and not old. (Think 64 bit and can handle more than 8gb ram.)
Click to expand...

For your friends uses, he would probably be better off paying for a dedicated server.

For example; I pay almost $200 a month for a server where I host;
10 Killing Floor Servers (all 6 slots)
4 Left 4 Dead Servers (all 4 or 8 slot)
3 Unreal Tournament Servers (10 slot, 8 slot and 8 slot)
1 Counter Strike Source Server (16 slot)
1 Teamspeak 3 server (512 Slot)

Still plenty of room to add more.

Additionally I host a number of web sites on the server as well.

I don't have to worry about hardware failure. If something fails, it gets replaced by them. Granted I've only had to replace one hard drive in 10 years of hosting dedicated servers. It didn't cost me anything and due to the downtime I had, at the time I was guaranteed 99.9% up time. I discovered the faulty hard drive and my server was down long enough to warrant that warranty, thus I got a free month worth of hosting. Now that my company has 24/7 hour stand by, I don't think I'd get that lucky again.
 
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