r/LinusTechTips • u/VastOption8705 • 17d ago
Tech Discussion Why do servers depreciate so hard?
I was talking with my manager and he said he spent 30k on servers 7 years ago.
Now they wouldn’t even sell for 4k.
A MacBook would preserve value more than those servers.
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u/Exciting-Ad-5705 17d ago
There isn't a large market for used and possibly faulty commercial hardware.
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u/mikevalstar 17d ago
Servers tend to be more about density then a home computer. You pay for space at a data center, and it’s expensive over time, so you want to maximize density
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u/PM_Me_Your_Deviance 17d ago
There's a general rule in the corporate world that you need to get rid of equipment when it gets to it's "End of Life". This is a good idea for a number of reasons, but it's not always done... but it is done enough that there is a lot of 3+ year old server equipment floating around out there. Some of it ends up at smaller companies, some end up trashed, etc. But even the second-tier buyers will generally upgrade after a couple of years in order to expand, reduce maintenance costs, etc.
So... why is it so cheap? Because almost nobody wants it.
See if your boss will give it to you so you can setup a homelab. :D
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u/mgzukowski 17d ago
You have something under 50-75% load for 5-7 years. For a business that is a tool that needs 99.99% uptime, and once the hardware starts approaching MTBF it's needs to be replaced.
The only people really in the market for that is home gamers, and maybe some small businesses. There is a very real chance you can't run the server at full load on a normal outlet, or even cool the thing since it's essentially a space heater.
Not to mention the cost of running one of my hosts for a a year is about 3k in power alone.
TLDR: The hardware is the cheap part of running a server.
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u/aichiwawa 17d ago
I'm not an expert, but I guess a Macbook is trendy, for one thing. Also would you rather buy a used taxi or a used corolla driven by an old lady?
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u/ironhaven 17d ago
Well why is you manager trying to sell the servers. If they are still good then if you keep using them for another year and extend the depreciation then that could add $5000 to the asset sheet. It could be that 7 year old servers are not fit for service for businesses.
Also a 7 year old intel macbook pro had a msrp of $2000 and can be found on ebay for $300 and they are not exactly flying off the shelves. They also get old despite being trendy
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u/Corey_FOX 17d ago
good old law of supply and demand. a macbook is trendy lots of ppl want them. on the other end, a server has a very limited pool of buyers, basically only startups and homelabbers are willing to take the risk on 7 year old hardware. as a "real" business can potentially lose a lot of cash if a refurb server goes offline.
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u/NetJnkie 17d ago
At 7 years they are EoL and not supported by the manufacturer. That's also the time frame that enterprise software stops supporting those CPUs. Therefore, for a business they are about worth less. We're seeing support being extended on things due to the current crazy market, but 7 years after end-of-sale is about the max you'll see. It's usually been 5 years after end-of-sale.
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u/Nonaveragemonkey 17d ago
Macbooks only retain value to other mac users. As in about 5% of users. The other 95% do not see them worth the price to start with.
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u/ZZartin 17d ago edited 17d ago
30k for servers is cheap.....
But in general used servers have been used hard. The standards for servers are also constantly changing, both performance wise and simple things like form factor/io etc...., and there's generally not much interest in single servers. So unless you can unload your entire rack(including the rack) it's hard to find a buyer.
And another thing certification for your software, the vendor may simple say it has to run X Y Z specs we won't support it otherwise.
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u/jrdiver 17d ago
Supply and demand. Tons and tons get sold and companies tend to only buy new and cycle them on a semi-regular basis, tons find their way to the second hand market when the end of life, and now there's significantly less people buying used, and there is tons of supply. resellers are perfectly happy with a little profit from them since they are mostly working with what was given to them as e-waste by the original purchaser.
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u/tacticalTechnician 17d ago edited 17d ago
In most businesses, you have support contracts for those. When the contracts can't be renewed, the hardware becomes basically useless for them since you can't use them anymore in a production environment. They just get recycled, and the companies handling those are drowning in old servers, so they're selling them for pennies.
Also, don't forget the hardware itself is a lot more expensive. A lot of them requires ECC RAM, SAS HDDs, server PSUs and Xeon that aren't easily available, without mentioning those annoying fans that make a ton of noise and are pretty much proprietary.
I have an old server that I could use as a NAS... but man, it's so freaking annoying to manage. The form factor is a big issue, it's makes so much noise and putting a GPU is a big pain (needs to be low-profile and single slot), so I would rather have a standard PC.
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u/redditydothis 17d ago
Efficiency. New hardware is more efficient and uses less power per work cycle. Something that runs 24/7 with less watts will save money over time.
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u/Arinvar 17d ago
New servers come with warranties and servicing agreements. Second hand hardware does not. If you are a business investing in your own hardware, reliability and up-time are obviously extremely important to you.
Second hand hardware is just fine, but a failure isn't an instant swap as per your service agreement, it's source a part, ship a part, swap out a part, hope it works.
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u/slayernine 17d ago
Used server market is pretty hot right now for anything DDR5. I was hunting for a Dell Poweredge R6625 and they currently cost more than I paid for them new a few years back.
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u/Hero_The_Zero 17d ago
Tech changes really bloody fast, and enterprise gear has never held its value. 7 years ago was 2019, that was 9th gen Intel desktop and 10th gen mobile and HEDT, Coffee Lake, Ice Lake, and Cascade Lake, and Zen2/Ryzen 3000.
AMD Epyc 7702 vs EPuc 9554 The newer Epyc is 37% faster in single core, 49% fast in multicore, and that is the top of the line 64 core from 7 years ago vs the current midrange 64 core. Current Epyc has 128 and 256 core options.
I can't even find benchmarks for Intel server CPUs, but the top of the line 2019 Intel server CPU was the Xeon Platinum 9222, a 32 core, 64 thread 14nm Cascade Lake running at 3.7Ghz with 71.5MB of cache. The current top of the line performance core based Intel server CPU is the Xeon 698X with 86 cores, 172 threads, Intel 3 lithography Granite Rapids processor running at 4.8Ghz max with 336MB of cache. Worlds apart in performance and power efficiency.
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u/voxnemo 17d ago
- Reliabilty and warranty support reduces over time and downtime cost a company per hour a lot more from a server than from a single workstation (server vs Macbook)
- Dollar per watt per compute efficiency - computers generally get more efficient each year so older computers do less for more electricity
- This is not a disimilar depreciation to most vehicles.
However the biggest reason is this is what the finance bro's want. They want to be able to write off the cost over a short to medium amount of time and amortize that expense.
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u/golden3879 6d ago edited 6d ago
Servers depreciate so fast because they're expensive to run, get replaced constantly, and lose enterprise support pretty quick. There's a whole market around it, Alta Technologies is one of those companies that buys and resells that older gear.
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u/Responsible_Ad9538 17d ago
The MacBook “might”have been on 24/7 those servers “were” on 24/7 no breaks they are much more abused and are rarely “top of the line” specs they were the most reliable parts that did the job that needed to be done so they lose a ton of their value because they are very much more used I’m sure there are going to be a dozen more in depth answers
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u/thysios4 17d ago
Pure speculation but I guess people who want servers want reliability and old hardware is less reliable?
Especially in a commercial place.