EEVblog #691 - Dumpster Dive Xeon Servers

[Monkeh]

Not stated and not implied.

Just a joke. Looks like another bug in the English language parser.

[LinkZ]

To those which throw away such things, just because they " need" to upgrade I wish they will need another one desperately someday . And I wish they cannot afford another one again, and have to beg for it  .  I really have no excuse for such behaviour, really! The should be ashamed, period. Those company should go OUT OF BUSINESS miserably, they are victims of planned obsolescence like the majority of us. What about to USE a little common sense? Do I REALLY need the last machine EVERY six months? Do I REALLY need the newest car every two years? The answer are CERTAINLY NOT. Those servers were NEW! Bloody bastards! When someone acts like those goddamns "big" companies, should loose his job and regret it for the rest of his life. And BTW, they WILL NEED those servers someday, trust me!

[Monkeh]

To those which throw away such things, just because they " need" to upgrade I wish they will need another one desperately someday . And I wish they cannot afford another one again, and have to beg for it  .  I really have no excuse for such behaviour, really! The should be ashamed, period. Those company should go OUT OF BUSINESS miserably, they are victims of planned obsolescence like the majority of us. What about to USE a little common sense? Do I REALLY need the last machine EVERY six months? Do I REALLY need the newest car every two years? The answer are CERTAINLY NOT. Those servers were NEW! Bloody bastards! When someone acts like those goddamns "big" companies, should loose his job and regret it for the rest of his life. And BTW, they WILL NEED those servers someday, trust me!

Rant rant rant and not a clue to be seen.

Those were four or five year old hardware and there are a variety of reasons they may have disposed of them.

[LinkZ]

A five years server is STILL fine. Even Dave will probably find a use for it. At least it could serve for secondary purposes, but throwing it away like garbage  . Really, this behaviour will be punished sooner or later!
Rant? No, no! I'm fine but the throwaway culture will came to an end, guaranteed! It may seem impossible today, but all the resource on this planet are limited and it's only a matter of time. Stay tuned and you will see that! And BTW the clue is "throw away a perfectly working machine (or whatever) is a shame typically performed by "modern" companies (or peoples) ignoring the background of production, environmental costs, human costs ecc" But again, nothing in this world is forever, and peoples/companies that are fine today, will not be the same in the future! It's a fact.

[Monkeh]

A five years server is STILL fine. Even Dave will probably find a use for it. At least it could serve for secondary purposes, but throwing away such garbage  . Really, this behaviour will be punished sooner or later!
Rant? No, no! I'm fine but the throwaway culture will came to an end, guaranteed! It may seem impossible today, but all the resource on this planet are limited and it's only a matter of time. Stay tuned and you will see that!

Once again, you have no idea.

What did they use those servers for? Did they need to upgrade for greater processing or storage capacity? Perhaps they no longer had a requirement for the machines at all.

Perhaps they required guarantees of uptime and they were no longer under a service contract. You don't know. Economic reality might one day come to slap you in the face.

[LinkZ]

Still this is not an excuse to toast them out like they were completely broken. A computer is always useful. They may sell them, and getting money back. But as throwaway company I think they don't understand the value of money. Support? Did you know what you're saying? HP stops supports for servers after 10 years or more.

[Monkeh]

Still this is not an excuse to toast them out like they were completely broken. They may sell them, and getting money back. But as throwaway company I think they don't know the value of money

I don't think you know the value of time.

Read the entire thread, have a think, and perhaps try running your own business some time.

[LinkZ]

You can sell on ebay in less than 5 min. Do you have an idea of what you're saying?

[Monkeh]

You can sell on ebay in less than 5 min. Do you have an idea of what you're saying?

You can sell on eBay in less than 5 minutes?

Sure. Now, clean it, package it, arrange shipment, handle payment, sort out the tax.. Deal with the inevitable scammers, shipping damage, and so forth.

Companies have their real work to get on with, you know.

[LinkZ]

Yeah, another 10 min for package what a waste of time! Let's fill the earth with (working) garbage

[Monkeh]

Yeah, another 10 min for package what a waste of time! Let's fill the earth with (working) garbage

Look, I don't like throwing out working stuff any more than you. But the world is not as clean cut as you think.

There are entire companies who specifically deal with disposal (resale, recycling) of this sort of equipment. They do not roll freely in oceans of cash. If everything were as simple as you think, they'd be richer than your dreams, surely? Everyone throws away perfectly good stuff worth money and it doesn't cost time or money to resell it, so surely they'd make lots of money?

[_Sin]

Kind of also depends on what happens to stuff left in the garbage room - if it's handled by a proper disposal company who will actually recycle what they can, or ends up in landfill.

These days there are often strict rules on that kind of thing, but I don't know Dave's local situation.

[LinkZ]

Monkeh, it's not (at least not only) a matter of money! Our planet is a landfill, and this will be a BIG problem for our children in the incoming future. I assume that those companies are made by peoples, the majority of those may have family, sons, nephews.. all those will pay for our behaviour, like we pay for the choices of our predecessors. Did you looked at the monitors that Dave showed? They are all throwed away...AWAY! Sometimes I really cannot believe when Dave says that he just found them on the road. So what we can (and should) do? Well, as an electronic blog we can SPREAD the REPAIR culture as much as we can and FIGHT the throwaway evil of our (fading) society based on the obsolete culture of the planned obsolescence.

[Monkeh]

Monkeh, it's not (at least not only) a matter of money!

But for a business IT IS!

If a business stops making money, it closes. Everyone loses their job, all the equipment gets disposed of. Game over. The reality is that you can't always do things the way you'd like.

Did you looked at the monitors that Dave showed? They are all throwed away...AWAY! ... Well, as a electronic blog we can SPREAD the REPAIR culture as much as we can and FIGHT the throwaway evil of our (fading) society based on the obsolete culture of the planned obsolescence.

Because people no longer needed those monitors. Sure, they could repair them (assuming they're broken).. or they could upgrade. Modern monitors use less power, have greater contrast, higher colour accuracy, higher resolution, and faster response times. But of course, we don't need any of that. We should just stop developing it and keep reusing the same stuff, never take the opportunity to move on..

[NiHaoMike]

A set of 3 RAM might be a hard sell when the majority of motherboards out there are dual channel. Similarly, a single RAM module would probably also be a hard sell.

For the bigger server, throw in a GPU and you'll end up with a nice workstation. A 750 will do if you're not planning on gaming or other GPU intensive apps.

[Electronics-Repairman]

I had my first type of dumpster score, I was delivering  to a house and the next door neighbour,asked me could I make use of a printer, I said yes, and made off with the treasure, when I stopped and had a look, it's was a HP laser printer,which I use now for making toner s track schematics for my pcb's definite winner,not only was I given the printer,I was also given 10 of each colour including black cartridges .

[Dave Turner]

Monkeh +x

I've worked for more than one company that learned not to consider IT to be a one time investment. What they have works so why change?

The necessity of the varied methods of communication in the modern world is what. It's for ever changing. If a company doesn't maintain yearly investment in IT it is becomes painfully expensive to upgrade when required.

It seems to average out at about 3 years for laptops and desktops and 5 years for servers. I never did figure out what is is for routers and switches, though I suspect say 7 years.

The companies I worked for tended to recycle rather than dump equipment but bear in mind it is a legal requirement to do so in the UK.

Also strictly speaking dumpster diving is illegal in the UK. Furthermore theoretically under the WEE directive discarded electronic equipment is meant to be, effectively, recycled.

[n45048]

I'll take them if you don't want them Dave. I can always drop in to Baulko after work.

[SeanB]

Get the monitors as well, you can never have too many monitors.

[EEVblog]

Agreed. The video subjects have been crap recently. I'm getting bored. I love the repairs, teardowns and tutorials. I want to LEARN.

There was a repair and troubleshooting video TWO VIDEOS before this one.
And the one before that was a how-to soldering tutorial of sorts.
And then THREE VIDEOS before that was a tutorial video.
People have very selective memories... 

[SeanB]

Agreed. The video subjects have been crap recently. I'm getting bored. I love the repairs, teardowns and tutorials. I want to LEARN.

There was a repair and troubleshooting video TWO VIDEOS before this one.
And the one before that was a how-to soldering tutorial of sorts.
And then THREE VIDEOS before that was a tutorial video.
People have very selective memories... 

What is this memory thing Dave, I cannot remember you ever making a video about BLAH BLAH BLAH...........    

[EEVblog]

These days there are often strict rules on that kind of thing, but I don't know Dave's local situation.

This stuff is not allowed in the garbage room, it's against strata rules. Same with office furniture etc.
But dump it they do, and take it away they do. I don't know what happens to it.

[Lightages]

I just had a thought.

Dave:

You receive all kinds of gifts and cool things from people all over the world. You also seem to have your office where gold falls from the skies sometimes.

There are maker spaces and underprivileged hobbyists all over the place but for you of course the ones that count would be near Sydney.

Why not take advantage of both of these opportunities and start redistributing the dumpster dive things you already have too much of to these needy places?

[Starblazer]

One thing to keep in mind if you find more of these big beefy servers....  sometimes there are microswitches in the main chassis to detect if a panel is off.  If there is a missing panel the fans will go HIGH until the panels are replaced or the unit is turned off. Even after you replace the panel, it takes a few minutes for the system to spin the fans down as it "trusts" the airflow again. The first high-speed spin-up is to obviously test the fans to make sure they can get to the rated speed.

[cdev]

Its my understanding that servers of a certain age are being tossed because the cost of electricity in the older machines is so high relative to the newer machines of equivalent CPU power thats its always cheaper to have a new energy efficient multicore server which uses less power.

The old machines are great running idle, though, or for use when somebody is working and turned off the rest of the time.

But fully loaded and running the economics favor newer hardware by a wide margin.

Newer 64 bit server hardware just uses a LOT fewer watts!