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Paid off my server hardware, now it's actually cheap

Dedicated Servers by MeritBudi 14 replies 5K views
MeritBudi

Member OP

11 #1

Already 18 month I pay for the Dell R740, already finish the payment last week. Now only colocation cost $65 per month, very worth it already. Before I pay $185 per month for finance + colo, now the total cost of ownership go down very fast can or not?

I make spreadsheet, want to share. The cloud instance same spec is $24 per month at GreenCloudVPS, my breakeven already happen at month 14. Now every month is profit lah. Who else already pay off their hardware? Share your number dong.

glasgow_tom

Member

7 #2

Congrats, back when source engine servers cost us fortunes in dedicated boxes. Tickrate 66 required real hardware, kids play valorant now on whatever garbage 'the cloud' gives them. Communities died when hosting became invisible.

My TCO spreadsheet goes back to 2008. Mourning communities that needed physical servers to exist.

admin

Administrator

Administrator

#3

— Admin

Congratulations on the milestone. We have seen increased interest in TCO discussions and will consider a pinned resource thread.

For those sharing spreadsheets: please include depreciation method, power cost assumptions, and labor hours for maintenance. Otherwise comparisons are misleading. Short paragraphs help readability.

Dry humor: we do not endorse financial advice, but we do endorse cheaper hosting.

sudo make me a sandwich
diegoracks

Member

#4

In my spreadsheet I make the comparison in the server vs in the cloud. Actually the cloud is more expensive or what? Friend, you forget the people is not counting their time for maintenance. How much hours you spend in the hardware? Make the math with $50 per hour and the cloud is cheap actually. Or what?

My R640 still good but I spend 4 hours per month in it. Friend.

Jonas

Member

Berlin

#5
  • TCO is personal math
  • Depends on your labor rate
  • Depends on your hardware source
  • Mine is Supermicro from liquidation
  • Paid off in 11 months
  • Colo is $55
  • But I spend zero hours because
  • IPMI handles everything
  • Except that one time
  • When I drove three hours
  • For a failed PSU
  • So add amortized travel cost
  • Still beats GreenCloudVPS
  • Beats HostHatch too
  • Beats CloudCone
  • The list continues
larryjeong

Member

#6

Bare metal is the only honest computing. 'the cloud' is someone else's computer with markup. Real server means dedicated, not this toy virtualized nonsense. workstation class minimum, 16 cores or you are not serious. My TCO includes the satisfaction of owning the iron. No emojis needed, this is serious.

$3/year. 128MB RAM. Pure happiness.
HieuTce

Member

#7

I did this in 2019 and again in 2022 and I am doing it again now and every time I run the numbers and every time the spreadsheet tells me the same thing which is that cloud is convenience and hardware is freedom and you pay for whichever one you want more of and I have always wanted freedom more than convenience and so I buy the server and I rack it and I own it and the depreciation is mine and the failure is mine and the upgrade path is mine and there is no vendor lockin and no price increase notification and no API change breaking my automation and I have a Dell R750 now and a R740 before that and a whitebox before that and the whitebox is still running as my backup target and the R740 sold for 40 percent of purchase price which the cloud never does and never will and you cannot sell a cloud instance when you are done with it and that is the math that never appears in the cloud TCO cal

BR

Member

#8

What cpu and ram config? I only see R740, not the specs

HO

Member

#9

GreenCloudVPS $340? That seems high for a single box.

kat_fold

Moderator

Moderator

#10

The labor hours one is real. Nobody counts their own time.

~be kind or be gone~

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