[Dylanear]

Ghost, they are 1U tall and a full 19" wide, quite deep, but there's two systems in each case, so perhaps not exactly blades given the two systems are built into the 1U full width rack case, not a blade enclosure. Technically I guess they are 1U dual system servers, not blades?

Xav, I think I recall about 300-320W when a system is at full load, like good multithreaded raytracing  benchmark. That's the two Xeon 5590 (3.3mhz, 3.6 turbo, 130W TDP), 48GB memory and Quadro P620 graphics card. So I might get 5 or 6 of these if I was very lucky running at load all at once on one of my 15A circuits in my apartment. I could in theory run a properly stout power cord and split the systems onto two 15A circuits, but then the heat and noise are real issues. Just one of these systems at full load screams with a high pitched wail, the cooling comes from 6 high speed 40mm fans and while not bad for most tasks, at full load they are LOUD. And then there's the heat. 5 of these systems at full load would basically be the same as running an electric heater full blast. I really don't have any serious thoughts or running more than 4 systems at load at the same time.


I managed to get 11 Quadro K600s for $120 (Canadian!). So now the first system has the P620 and the rest have K600s. The K600 is a good bit slower for 3D and has 1GB not 2GB, but they still will do 4K desktops. Now I just need a 4k KVM or switch to use with my VGA KVM.

I did use one of these systems to connect to a workstation at a studio and use a remote desktop (full 4k!). So, officially, they are being used for modern professional use! I'm surely one of the last people doing modern professional computer graphics on an SGI! If only as a remote desktop and it is an Intel, not MIPS machine. But I still get a kick out of firing up a "SGI" in the morning and starting in on the day's tasks.

[ghost180sx]

That's awesome you're using them in the office! Most of the forum will not agree, but technically they are real SGI systems. They're not just re-badged supermicro, as some more customization was done to them over the usual offerings, and the SGI name and company was officially purchased. But they are a far cry from the MIPS and Itanic systems of yore. Probably not a bad thing, as modern Linux and BSD is so powerful. You said they came with Infiniband? You have an IB switch too, yet? What kind of cabling do they use, fibre?

Nice to see another Canuck on here, eh?

[Raion]

It just runs Linux and such which makes it less than the focus of the forum. Anything that doesn't have IRIX is boring tbh.