if there's ever a glut in GPUs that formula might change but it sure hasn't happened yet. Also, people deeply underestimate how long it would take a competing technology to displace them. It took GPUs nearly a decade and the fortunate occurrence of the AI boom to displace CPUs in the first place despite bountiful evidence in HPC that they were already a big deal.
* The GPUs in use in data centers typically aren’t built for consumer workloads, power systems, or enclosures.
* Data Centers often shred their hardware for security purposes, to ensure any residual data is definitively destroyed
* Tax incentives and corporate structures make it cheaper/more profitable to write-off the kit entirely via disposal than attempt to sell it after the fact or run it at a discount to recoup some costs
* The Hyperscalers will have use for the kit inside even if AI goes bust, especially the CPUs, memory, and storage for added capacity
That’s my read, anyway. They learned a lot from the telecoms crash and adjusted business models accordingly to protect themselves in the event of a bubble crash.
We will not benefit from this failure, but they will benefit regardless of its success.
In reality, if you have a dryer outlet, you have a good fraction of 10 kW available.
If someone can afford an 8 GPU server, they should be able to afford some #6 wire, a 50A 2P breaker, and a 50A receptacle. It has the same exact power requirements as an L2 EV charger.
You would need a neutral if it was a 208/120V three-phase service.
Neutrals and grounds are sized per the NEC, neutrals are the same size as the line conductors and equipment grounds are sized off of a table.
#6 conductors and #10 ground is what the NEC calls for.
I live the NYC 208V life doing mostly resi, though.
Quick search of the spec for that is 6 power supplies, 2 of which are redundant. Looks to use a neutral to me. Says it uses C19/C20 connectors
edit: wait most ranges use 14-50R outlets and need a neutral ran. I am calling your statement into question. Surely harmonics and 120V internal draws cause non-zero neutral current. And I'm sure GPUs have harmonics being semiconductor flavored.
My bad, NEMA 14-50R is a 4-wire receptacle with a neutral.
I learned something new today, 200% neutrals are not required by the NEC but can help with non-linear loads, and certain transformers that mitigate harmonics need 200% neutrals.