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Comment by throwaway11460 | Hacker News Reader

It's the oldest, most successful, cheapest and for many people technologically superior server maker that's not IBM or HPE. Many successful businesses were built on their products in the past 3 decades. Most notably Google.

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They were always in the list of "you want something that's workstation/server reliable, but you don't want to deal with an OEM who's going to sell you a propriatery case/PSU/motherboard. ISTR Tyan being in the same boat, but you don't hear as much about them anymore.

As a small, very specific footnote: I am unaware of anyone but Supermicro making 3U chassis with a 80mm rear fan. As the ATX rear I/O is sized to squeeze into 1U it means there's only 2U or 88.90mm left for fans and most chassis makers will just go with 60mm fans.

ISTR seeing they did 4U with 120mm instead of dual 80 too. That always looked compelling, because I figured a 4U rackmount would make a neat desktop-style case, but I could never justify the price.

I make my desktops out of 4u chassis. Mainly because they have good airflow. But it does bring one glaring design issue to light. consumer grade mother boards are schizophrenic about their airflow. the cpu and ram are orientated to flow left to right and the expansion cards expect the flow to go front to back. Server grade mother boards have coherent airflow however I have found server boards are less than optimal for a desktop application. they boot slow, are picky about components, and the cpus tend to be slow and wide. So I tend to alternate, one generation I get fed up with consumer grade bullshit and buy a server grade board, the next I get fed up with server grade bullshit and buy a consumer board.

My favorite chassis so far has been this generic one, the fans suck(just buy a new set of good fans right away) and supplied drive bays suck. but look at all them 5 1/4 bays, bays for days. You can put every stupid hotswap bay, fan controller and drink holder gimmick you want in there. and still have room for more.

https://www.newegg.com/rosewill-rsv-l4500u-black/p/N82E16811...

AsRock X570D4i-2t because https://www.reddit.com/r/sffpc/comments/lymbka/asrock_rack_x...

Man, I got a rack of tyans recently and I have to say, its not even a contest. Maybe something was of with that order but 1/3 of the hosts had issues, I suspect at the motherboard level but aside from sending them back a couple times for service support I've pretty much abandon the rack at this point. I'll probably send the machines to the shredder and replace them next time I have a budget cycle.

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