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Looking for honest assessment of whether my 5-year-old servers are worth moving

Datacenter Talk by wendy 21 replies 2.3K views
13 #1

The question is what you are running on them and whether your colo costs are fixed. I have a small fleet of R640s at Contabo (https://contabo.com), and the monthly is locked in. Moving to new hardware means new contract, likely higher per-U pricing. Have you priced out the migration labor? That is where the hidden costs live. The power efficiency gains from newer chips are not trivial. You might be throwing away money on electricity depending on your local rates.

Have you tried restarting it?
2 #2

Thank you for sharing wendy, can you tell more about your migration labor cost lah? I also have old server at InterServer, can not decide to move or not move wkwkwk

My experience is slow-slow planning is better than fast-fast regret, thank you

3 #3
# yabs on R640 (2019) vs AmpereOne (2025)
# both 128GB DDR4, NVMe local

fio mixed rw:
  R640:  45k IOPS read | 12k IOPS write
  Ampere: 89k IOPS read | 34k IOPS write

iperf3 to same target:
  R640:  8.2 Gbps
  Ampere: 24.7 Gbps

geekbench 6:
  R640:  892 single / 3420 multi
  Ampere: 1840 single / 12840 multi

power at wall:
  R640:  187W idle, 340W peak
  Ampere: 67W idle, 145W peak

Decent disk IO, meh network on the old box. New one runs circles around. Your call on sentimentality.

fio, iperf, geekbench. results or gtfo.
4 #4

@SingaporeRep thanks for numbers! Very helpful

@wendy I think you are right about hidden costs, but also right about power! Made test order last month at HostHatch, can confirm new hardware is super efficient! Sent ticket about migration assistance and they were very fast!

OP what is your colo rate per kW? If it is high, math is easy! Cheers!

swimming upstream since 2019 🐟
#5

I also have old r640s, power bill is brutal

instant noodles, instant deploys
#6

HostHatch migration assistance is free?

#7

What is your per-U rate at InterServer

#8
OwnerSeeker said:
Power at wall:
R640: 187W idle, 340W peak
Ampere: 67W idle, 145W peak

Forgot to mention I measured this at our Singapore office with a Kill-A-Watt style meter, not IPMI readouts. IPMI lies on the R640 by about 15-20W in my experience.

fio, iperf, geekbench. results or gtfo.
#9
SingaporeRep said:
I also have old r640s, power bill is brutal

Same here in Osaka. TEPCO rates went up again. My two R640s idle at more than my fridge.

instant noodles, instant deploys
1 #10

My colo is not at InterServer, I am just shopping around. Currently at a local place in Hillsboro paying $350 per kW per month. Seems high but I have not compared in years.

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