Hacker News Reader

I for one am surprised that those are 2U servers and they haven't gone to 1U to double their space efficiency.

it looks like two of them may fit side-by-side, like this they get to use the big ram sticks and a cheap psu, as well as fans that will last a lot longer than those pesky 1u fans.

They may also use 'deep' racks to the machines have the PSU's in the middle and the fronts on the facing sides of the cabinets, one front, one back. That would make it twice as efficient as 1U, it would also explain why the cables go out the front.

I switched back and forth between 1U and 2U setups for the same motherboard, and I could run my system in higher ambient temperature with less airflow when using a 2U heatsink.

From the patent-looking picture in the article, it looks like the racks are 1-deep, so I don't think they're using 2-deep racks.

I've seen them two deep side by side. They had custom racks that reminded me of those racks of trays of food you'd see in large production kitchens. There were four systems per level/tray.

The server rack that they have at the Computer History Museum has them stacked 4 systems per tray as well.

1u limits airflow, probably too hot to stack HD that close, and 1u power supplies were probably cost prohibitive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com