With these revelations out of the way, I was ready to say goodbye to a nearly $1,o00 build on PCPartPicker and start scouring eBay for some parts. But first, I had to decide what I was buying.
What’s 1U between friends?
The R710 has a counterpart, the R610. Since I knew I was looking for something along the lines of the R710, I had an early decision to make – should I stick with the R710, or should I look for its slimmer sibling, the R610? The R710 is what’s called a 2U server, and the R610 is a 1U server. While most rack-mount hardware has about the same width and mostly the same length, the “U” part refers to the cases’ height, with 1U being about 1.75″, and 2U therefore being 3.5″ tall. Something as thin as a 1U server would be loud, and even though noise isn’t a big concern for me, it’d be nice to have something a little quieter (and marginally more efficient).