I paid $89 for a "Dell R730" on a no-name auction site. What arrived: an R710 with the service tag sharpied over and a new sticker printed. The specs listed were wrong. The iDRAC was dead. I deserved it for not checking the seller's history, for not demanding photos of the POST screen, for thinking $89 was real.
What I did next was dumber: I kept it.
The R710 had 32GB RAM (not 64GB), one X5650 (not dual E5-2680v3, impossible anyway), and a PERC 6/I that couldn't see drives over 2TB. I spent $40 on a H200, $25 on a second X5650, pulled 48GB from my old desktop. Total investment: $154 for a 12-year-old server that draws 180W idle.
It's been running 14 months now. Proxmox. My longest-running node. The scam became my most reliable box through sheer stubbornness.
WARNINGS for others: check service tags with Dell's tool. Verify before paying. fail2ban your life!
