HardwareThere’s still time to bid on this decommissioned petaflop supercomputer including 8,064 Intel Xeon CPUs but no cables—local collection onlyWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
HardwareThere’s still time to bid on this decommissioned petaflop supercomputer including 8,064 Intel Xeon CPUs but no cables—local collection onlyWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: US General Services Administration)
Specs? Oh, nothing too excessive, just 8,064Intel Xeon E5-2697v4CPUs, each with 18 cores, a Turbo frequency of 3.6GHz and a 145W TDP. That’s a total core count of 145,152, in combination with a combined total of 313,344 GB of DDR4-2400 RAM. However, the listing warns that you might have to keep an eye on that memory, as over its 7 years of operation “Approximately 1% of nodes experienced failure…primarily attributed to DIMMs with ECC errors, which will remain unrepaired”
There’s a few other small factors to take into account, too. For a start, it doesn’t come with any fibre optic or CAT5/6 cabling, which may add up to quite the additional expense if you do decide to pull the trigger. The listing also warns that:
“Moving this system necessitates the engagement of a professional moving company. Due to their considerable weight, the racks require experienced movers equipped with proper Professional Protection Equipment (PPE) to ensure safe handling. The purchaser assumes responsibility for transferring the racks from the facility onto trucks using their equipment.”
Seems a bit excessive if you ask me, although I’m sure your pals would help out with the promise of beers and pizza once it’s all finished. The water cooling system has also been dismantled and appears to have had some issues, as the listing notes that “the system is currently experiencing maintenance limitations due to faulty quick disconnects causing water spray”. It is included with the sale, however, along with some usedPGW cooling fluid, adding up to approximately 10 gallons per E-cell.
Given there’s 14 of them—each weighing 1,500 lbs each—that’s 140 gallons of coolant you’re expected to shift on top of the supercomputer units themselves, so I’d advise eating a hearty breakfast on moving day if you plan on giving your professional moving team a helping hand.
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Best gaming PC: The top pre-built machines.Best gaming laptop: Great devices for mobile gaming.
Not only that, but you’ll need quite the power connection. It’s estimated that in its original role crunching data foradvanced atmospheric and Earth sciences research, it was using around 1.7 megawatts of power. This being the case, I’d suggest calling up your electricity provider beforehand just to make sure you don’t plunge the surrounding areas into darkness on first boot.
Still interested? Well, the auction finishes today at 6.11 PM US Central Time, so you’ll have to get your skates on if you’re thinking of making an offer. I have pitched it to the PC Gamer hardware team as a potential equipment purchase, but the consensus seems to be that while it may well fit in our offices, we’d all have to stand outside and look at it through the windows as there wouldn’t be room for anything else. Boo.
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