I’ve already done testing and hardware validation, so we’re beyond that point. Simply put, the mini PC hardware just has better price/performance than any server counterpart that I’ve seen or tested as of yet.

All my testing shows that, from a price and performance perspective, this would be the route to go. So at this point, I’m just looking for the rackmount solution.

build a custom rack with aluminum profiles, such as 2020, 3030 or 4040.

Could you go on about what you mean by 2020, 3030, 4040 etc? Would definitely like to hear more, thanks!

Dell poweredge fx2s with 4 x fc630

From a cost to performance perspective, I don’t believe the solution you mentioned would be very attractive. For example, what I am looking to build, would be 700 pretty fast physical CPU cores (4.4ghz) @ $23k (and more cores/speed, for incremental price increase). I haven’t found any server solution, used or new, which can compare to that in raw processing power.

Why not VMs? Dell poweredge fx2s with 4 x fc630

It is a fair question! The price/performance metric for what I am building far exceeds what you’re looking at.

For example, with my setup for $23k, I’ll have 700 CPU Cores and 1.6TB of memory, in addition to (not needed) 25TB of NVMe storage, as well as decent amount of clustered GPU compute, albeit not the goal.

700 fast processing cores for $23k is just not possible using server architecture at this time.