Suppose, in a strictly hypothetical scenario, you purchased a Generation III Dell Poweredge from your local PC recycler ( who may have given you a 40% discount ). Now you have a 1U rack server, made in 2009, and you're wondering what to do with it.
This is a totally opinionated guide to getting the absolute most of a Gen. III Poweredge.
Since hardware of this vintage has long since been phased out of data-centers,
parts are cheap. While it will never compete with modern hardware
on a watts / dollar basis, when fully spec'd out these systems are roughly equivalent to
an c5d.4xlarge AWS EC2 instance, which would run about $550 per month. If you add
a decent GPU into the mix you can end up with something closer to a p3.2xlarge
instance, which would set you back $2200 / month. If we assume power is about
$0.15 per kilowatt hour, we are looking at a monthly power bill in the $30-50 dollar range.
This means if you need a big compute / build node Poweredge 1950's actually make
a decent option.
For reasons we will discuss in the hardware section these machines are LOUD. As in, non-trivial risk of hearing damage loud. If you live in a small space there is no way to adequately mask the sound, and if you live in a large space you need to make peace with a room that will be borderline inhospitable. However, if you plan on colo'ing your system this will not make much of a difference.
These machines are also not particularly flexible when it comes to hardware. They were never designed for high power PCIe devices, and those will only accept graphics cards under duress. Modern servers that include auxillary 12 volt plugs and have 2U sized PCIe risers take to graphics cards and unusual PCIe hardware much, much more easily.
This guide is (mostly) a static site, hosted over here.