IIRC our R610's (96GB, 12 Cores @ 3GHz) were around $7K a piece.

256GB/32 Core/1.8GHz R910s are around $22K last I looked. This stuff really is stupid cheap in comparison to renting.

You'd need to talk to a Sales person to get that kind of pricing, but the general rule is to discount MSRP by at least 30% when you're working with a major vendor.

I just ordered a 32GB, 2x4-core, 4x600GB velociraptor machine for $5000. Add the fibre channel and extra RAM and I bet it cost $7-9000 per box.

Unfortunately I can't, since I wasn't the one that wrote up the PO for it. I just asked how much the equipment cost I had to install out of curiosity.