It boils down to a pet peeve of mine that requires more context.
A former sysadmin job gave me a deep disdain for 40mm fans and modern 1U/2U off-the-shelf AC powered servers. It's a technological dead-end that is a legacy of old datacenter architectures that no longer make sense to continue. A holistic blade-based DC powered datacenter eliminates much of the inefficiencies inherent to that legacy AC design.
Now, I'm not aiming to do a high-density homelab and regardless how cool they are, an Oxide Computer rack is about three orders of magnitude out of reach across several metrics. That being said, I think a DC powered homelab can enjoy a lot of the benefits.
For example, I have one 10 Gib switch, three gigabit switches (one per room), a Synology NAS and a Android TV player. With AC that's six power supplies, each taking a dedicated outlet for less than 60W combined. With PoE I can power all of that directly from my 10 Gib switch. That's five less power supplies and also gets rid of the power strips.
Or take a 250W ATX power supply. On AC it requires transformers, full bridge rectifiers, big bulky capacitors, DC-to-DC converters and most likely a fan. On DC it requires just the DC-to-DC converters, with modern power electronics that's doable at a fraction of the volume and without the fan because the actual power supply is upstream and potentially shared across multiple equipments.
I might have an affinity for doing stupid and insane projects, but it does come from a thoughtful position. If I ever pull it off, hopefully it can show that we don't have to endure outdated and legacy designs forever even within the comfort of our homes. Alas, I'm busy doing other cursed things at the moment so I just put that angry little server in a spare room for now.
A former sysadmin job gave me a deep disdain for 40mm fans and modern 1U/2U off-the-shelf AC powered servers. It's a technological dead-end that is a legacy of old datacenter architectures that no longer make sense to continue. A holistic blade-based DC powered datacenter eliminates much of the inefficiencies inherent to that legacy AC design.
Now, I'm not aiming to do a high-density homelab and regardless how cool they are, an Oxide Computer rack is about three orders of magnitude out of reach across several metrics. That being said, I think a DC powered homelab can enjoy a lot of the benefits.
For example, I have one 10 Gib switch, three gigabit switches (one per room), a Synology NAS and a Android TV player. With AC that's six power supplies, each taking a dedicated outlet for less than 60W combined. With PoE I can power all of that directly from my 10 Gib switch. That's five less power supplies and also gets rid of the power strips.
Or take a 250W ATX power supply. On AC it requires transformers, full bridge rectifiers, big bulky capacitors, DC-to-DC converters and most likely a fan. On DC it requires just the DC-to-DC converters, with modern power electronics that's doable at a fraction of the volume and without the fan because the actual power supply is upstream and potentially shared across multiple equipments.
I might have an affinity for doing stupid and insane projects, but it does come from a thoughtful position. If I ever pull it off, hopefully it can show that we don't have to endure outdated and legacy designs forever even within the comfort of our homes. Alas, I'm busy doing other cursed things at the moment so I just put that angry little server in a spare room for now.