Hetzner Price Adjustment

Re:Hetzner Price Adjustment by wongarsu on Thursday August 11, 2022 @09:17AM (#32425130)

There's a reason used servers are so cheap on ebay: if you run them 24/7 their electricity cost makes them unattractive compared to new hardware (often within a year).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hetzner Price Adjustment by mynameisvlad on Thursday August 11, 2022 @10:13AM (#32425909)

Highly disagree.

Said in another comment, my server averages around 100-200W. It's equivalent to running a gaming PC.

The reason there's a lot of cheap servers on eBay is that their support contracts expired and are absolutely ridiculously expensive to maintain for a big company. It's easier to get a new server (which will likely have performance and efficiency upgrades as well) than to continue maintaining a server that no longer has a support contract.

The reason there's not many servers in people's hands is size and noise. Servers aren't meant to go in a house; most people don't have server racks in their home. And by default, the fans are jet engines, even behind closed doors.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hetzner Price Adjustment by Gasp0de on Thursday August 11, 2022 @10:24AM (#32426114)

You probably live in the USA, because 200w 24/7 would cost me about 600€/year which is definitely significant.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hetzner Price Adjustment by happyopossum on Thursday August 11, 2022 @11:53AM (#32427603)

I live in the USA - California, and 150W 24/x would cost about $550/yr. In fact it would cost me a lot more, as my family shifted to time-of-use billing to save money (yeah, it means we don't do certain things between 4-8pm, but with some adjustment it's made a difference in our bills).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hetzner Price Adjustment by collegeburner on Thursday August 11, 2022 @11:42AM (#32427437)

one of the upsides to living in texas, lots of cheap wind power lol. even with more expensive electricity i can still run old hardware for cheap. means less e waste also.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hetzner Price Adjustment by delroth on Thursday August 11, 2022 @11:55AM (#32427648)

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-TEX-ERCO

Your cheap TX electricity is, unsurprisingly, mostly gas. And if you look at data from 12h ago it was more coal than wind.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hetzner Price Adjustment by Scoundreller on Thursday August 11, 2022 @01:53PM (#32429425)

Yearly averages are probably the most sensible to look at. Wind is at 20% which is still nothing to sneeze at:

> According to ERCOT, nearly half of Texas’ electricity was generated by natural gas-fired power plants in 2019. Coal-fired plants and wind power each generated about 20 percent, while the state’s two nuclear power plants — the South Texas Project near Bay City and Comanche Peak near Glen Rose — supplied a total of 11 percent. Solar, hydroelectric and biomass resources provided most of the remainder

https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/fiscal-notes/2020/augu...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hetzner Price Adjustment by vorpalhex on Thursday August 11, 2022 @11:07AM (#32426888)

A fan replacement and activating quiet mode on the server (usually a bios option or sometimes a hardware tweak) helps with the noise a ton at the cost of slightly less thermal ceiling.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hetzner Price Adjustment by mynameisvlad on Thursday August 11, 2022 @12:29PM (#32428161)

That's why I said "by default". I have done the IPMI toggles needed to lower the fans but it's still not quiet by any stretch of the imagination.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Hetzner Price Adjustment by Nextgrid on Thursday August 11, 2022 @10:36AM (#32426343)

They are still a great deal for burstable workloads or to use as a workstation - only run it when needed so no need to run 24/7.

If you need really cheap (and local!) compute for short periods of time, picking up one of those servers can still work out cheaper than renting from a cloud provider.

[ Parent | on HN ]