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Athlon 64's in Hetzner's Auction - who's renting these?
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Athlon 64's in Hetzner's Auction - who's renting these?

xyzxyz Member
edited April 2021 in Providers

Having watched Hetzner's server auctions for a while, there's something that never really made much sense to me.

You see the following server configuration show up frequently: AMD Athlon 64 3700+, 2GB RAM, 2x 160-320GB HDD.
What's weird is that they're always priced the same as significantly more powerful i7 systems with 16+GB RAM and 2x2TB drives.

At the time of writing, there's 3x Athlon64 systems listed, all at the currently cheapest auction price of €26.89/mo, but for the same money, you can get a i7 2600/3770/4770, 16-32GB RAM, 2x 2-3TB HDD system.
Ignoring Hetzner's other dedicated servers, a single-core Athlon64 3700+ at that price isn't even that good value, considering that cheaper VPSes probably perform better (or if you need dedicated resources, there's plenty of alternatives with better specs for cheaper).

If it's a price reduction auction, and no-one was renting these Athlon64s out, you'd expect the price to fall lower than the i7s, but I never have seen this happen. This seems to suggest that someone is picking these systems over the i7s, or that Hetzner is recycling them behinds the scenes to prevent the price from going down (I've seen some servers listed as "Fixed price", presumably for that reason).
Assuming the former, why would anyone pick an Athlon64 over the i7s?

Comments

  • ericlsericls Member, Patron Provider

    yea, that doesn't make too much sense.. I guess no one buys them and they just get desposed or something?

  • SplitIceSplitIce Member, Host Rep

    There is always someone looking for the cheapest server possible and who doesnt know any better.

    But yeah they really should be aged out of the Auctions.

    Hetzner likely has a minmum price set for every unit. This would explain what you have been seeing.

    Thanked by 1webcraft
  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    You'd be surprised how little "hosts" know about CPU and computers in general.

    A common question brought up by potential summer hosts is CPU question.

    Thanked by 2lentro PulsedMedia
  • yoursunnyyoursunny Member, IPv6 Advocate

    @deank said:
    You'd be surprised how little "hosts" know about CPU and computers in general.

    A common question brought up by potential summer hosts is CPU question.

    I neither confirm nor deny that yoursunny summer host has only one CPU for all the IPv9 servers.

    Our YABS CPU score is only 120 or so because it's ARMv5, but the benchmark result is consistent regardless of how many servers are busy.

  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    ARMv5, blah. Use v8.

    I believe they announced v9 very recently.

    Thanked by 1yoursunny
  • xyzxyz Member

    @SplitIce said: Hetzner likely has a minmum price set for every unit. This would explain what you have been seeing.

    I thought that was what the "Fixed price" status was for (if you search for i7-9xx CPU servers, many of them have that label).

    @deank said: You'd be surprised how little "hosts" know about CPU and computers in general.

    I suppose that's a reason, but even a novice should see that 16GB > 2GB, or 2TB > 300GB. Maybe there's someone thinking that "3700+" > "2600" or something, but if I was unsure about CPUs, I'd look at other figures.

  • Hetzner shows the CPU-B scores, so it is unlikely that someone thinking Athlon 64 is better.
    I think that the price is at the lowest price, and it will never reduce further even if no one buy it.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider
    edited April 2021

    @deank said:
    You'd be surprised how little "hosts" know about CPU and computers in general.

    A common question brought up by potential summer hosts is CPU question.

    This!

    We've been having an argument with one colo customer who thinks they can count the intake power of their server from PSU size + CPU utilization, and claiming that is more reliable than actual REAL energy monitors ... facepalm

    That being said, i don't think anyone is really taking those Athlons, probably just new ones getting vacated and once a unit does not sell on auction they recycle those. But the new ones coming in makes it look like some people actually get those

  • stefemanstefeman Member
    edited April 2021

    @PulsedMedia said:

    @deank said:
    You'd be surprised how little "hosts" know about CPU and computers in general.

    A common question brought up by potential summer hosts is CPU question.

    This!

    We've been having an argument with one colo customer who thinks they can count the intake power of their server from PSU size + CPU utilization, and claiming that is more reliable than actual REAL energy monitors ... facepalm

    That being said, i don't think anyone is really taking those Athlons, probably just new ones getting vacated and once a unit does not sell on auction they recycle those. But the new ones coming in makes it look like some people actually get those

    What kind of colo do you offer at helsinki? Where can one order and look for prices? (Fellow Finn/Helsinki resident asking) :P I don't like Hetzner colo features much, and I'm looking for comparison.

  • PulsedMediaPulsedMedia Member, Patron Provider

    @stefeman said: What kind of colo do you offer at helsinki? Where can one order and look for prices? (Fellow Finn/Helsinki resident asking) :P I don't like Hetzner colo features much, and I'm looking for comparison.

    Very small scale for local businesses only. PM for more information.
    We mainly offer individual server spaces right now -- and we cannot compete with Hetzner on pricing.

  • NeoonNeoon Community Contributor, Veteran
    edited April 2021

    Well, Hetznar said, they want to keep the old hardware.

    Plot twist, hetzner is selling old i7's on ebay but not the athlons.
    But why you ask? Well I guess they shorten supply to rise the price.

    Instead they could just sell the Athlons instead.

  • They probably calculate the minimum price based on power consumption, and the 89W TDP CPU is not cheap to run despite its lack of performance. I'm just surprised they haven't written them off yet.

  • TDP tells you nothing of the real power consumption, a old athlon system idles at ~100w while a modern system can idle at under 10w.

    I guess the effort to sell them is higher than what they would get for them, that is why they keep them as long as they don't have to touch the system.

  • FalzoFalzo Member

    they for sure have written them off. most likely they have some clients still running old boxes and it's less work to leave a few racks just running and keep on offering the empty boxes instead of removing them one by one etc. then the empty space also is probably not a fit for anything else in terms of cabling, internal network/assignment structure and whatnot.

    I'd assume they more likely do not think in 'servers' but rather racks or even cages/floors or whatever. the rest is highly automated and unless you can consolidate on a quite a number of servers/racks in one go it'll be cheaper to just have them there sitting duck. offering them won't hurt though, maybe still someone jumps on it nevertheless and even if not it might push for other sales if there is some different bottom-line which you can easily outrank with the actual lowend model 🤷‍♂️

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