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by swingline-747 2815 days ago
Retail price of the server components (no racks, PDUs, busbars, fibre drop, network switch, KVM, circuit-breaker, rack&stack, rack anti-tip bracing, artistic cabling, tech support):

CPU 8176M: $11,805.00 USD x 8 = $94,440.00

RAM 64GB: $866.23 x 192 = $166,316.16

Chassis + 2x 10 GbE NICs + SSD boot device: ~$8000

Total: ~$269k USD

AWS price: $803k

Under 150% gross profit margin (without electricity, fibre or real-state) over 3 years. I'd say the closer figure is ~ $300-400k per box for single company-scale servers, leading to a closer-to-net profit Amazon profit of around 100%

Although, it's possible to keep a server beyond its lifecycle and run it into the ground once it's already paid-for, as opposed to getting nothing at the end of the Amazon lease.

There's trade-offs for both cases; some people would rather pay more to not have to deal with quotes, vendors or shipping issues.

1 comments

> (no racks, PDUs, busbars, fibre drop, network switch, KVM, circuit-breaker, rack&stack, rack anti-tip bracing, artistic cabling, tech support)

Anyone paying more than a negligible amount (per server) for any of these is needlessly over-paying. For a server this expensive, it had better be way below 1%. (Tech support is arguable, but it costs a pretty penny from AWS, too).

> RAM 64GB: $866.23 x 192 = $166,316.16

These CPUs can't support 192 DIMMs, only 96, so they're limited to the much more expensive 128GB modules. That means you're looking at closer to $250k for the RAM alone.

Read the spec sheet...

6 channels per socket (2 controllers with 3 lanes each), 8 sockets, and 64 GB LR DIMMs.

128 DIMMs are $2-3k a pop.

192 sockets, 8 way, up to 24TB of ram w 128GB or 12TB with 64GB sticks:

https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/7U/7088/SYS-7088B...

If someone wants to throw more money on RAM to be slightly faster, that's a solution design-decision; it's doubtful Amazon would do that. If they are, great.

> https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/7U/7088/SYS-7088B

That's previous generation:

>Intel® Xeon® processor E7-8800 v4/v3 family

The articles states:

> All three sizes are powered by the latest generation Intel® Xeon® Platinum 8176M (Skylake) processors

You mention the 8176Ms in your original comment, too. The current SuperMicro product that supports those is https://www.supermicro.com/products/system/7U/7089/SYS-7089P... and that only has 96 DIMM slots.

> Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors, 8S-3 UPI up to 10.4GT/s

> 96x 288-pin DDR4 DIMM slots

> Supports up to 12TB DDR4 ECC 3DS LRDIMM in 96 DIMM slots

I think you'll find that this is due to the limitations of the CPU itself:

> Max Memory Size (dependent on memory type) 1.5 TB

according to https://ark.intel.com/products/120505/Intel-Xeon-Platinum-81...