YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Very nice!! Thanks for sharing!

I enjoyed your post but you went a bit overkill IMO (don't get me wrong: I know it's part of the fun).

> A Xeon E3-1226 v3 with 4 cores, 32GB of RAM, 2TB of storage.

> First it was Plex transcoding. Two people streaming at once and the quad-core Xeon started choking. Then I saw Frigate - real-time AI object detection on security camera feeds. On CPU, Frigate’s detector alone ate about 120% CPU, more than one of my four cores.

> The R730 I landed on has dual Xeon E5-2698 v4 processors. 20 cores each, so 40 cores and 80 threads in one box. That turned out to be far more CPU than I need

> I bought mine from Server Design Lab fully configured for about $1,850 each. Still a fraction of the $15,000+ sticker price new, but not the “$300 eBay special” you see in Reddit posts.

You kinda went ballistic: paying two times $1850 for used servers... You say it yourself: you now have more CPU than you need.

I simply upgraded my server's old Xeon to a Xeon with many cores: something like a Xeon E5-2683 v4 is 16 cores / 32 threads and they're basically free. And they consume less energy under load than your E5-2698 v4 (a E5-2698 v4 20 cores is a good choice too and they go for, what, $40? Less cores than that and those Xeons are basically given away now).

I literally have the "reddit special" $300 server: an HP Z440 workstation with 96 GB of ECC RAM in which I replaced the Xeon with a v4 with many cores and I paid not even $300 for the entire thing.

16 cores compared to 4 cores goes a long way.

It's always nice to read about other setups but I'd say there's a middle ground between "Xeon with only 4 cores" and 2x dual-Xeon 20 cores each for 80 cores / 160 threads total: instead of buying two $1850 servers you could have removed that old 4-cores Xeon and stuck a 14/16/18 or 20 cores Xeon in its place.

These 10 years old+ Xeons are really serious workhorses.

Isnt plex transcoding something that is better handled by a separate device, its a very specific capability which normally nothing else across containers needs

I've started running out of RAM. I guess things tend to use more and more RAM over time. So I've started getting rid of services I don't use much. I have 6 hard disks all at the 6 year mark and a couple showing worrying SMART readings. It was fun but now with hardware prices it starts to feel like a bit of a liability. AI has drained most of the fun out of computing for me.

That's cool, personally I would have just gotten a similarly priced mac mini or studio

Who's your internet provider? I'm about to launch my product and am seriously considering deploying it in a home lab, but I'm feeling on the fence about Google Fiber 1G out of a residential neighborhood in Austin.

This encourages me to buy a node for my homelab but holy shit the prices now are very skyrocketed. Even I kinda struggle to find a new node for my homelab because most of the mini PCs or refurbished such as Optiplex and ThinkCentre are going expensive too and most of it are out of stock.