IBM server X3850x6 with all the bells and whistles! (PWJ222)

Never seen a server with so many levers and drawers and modules before! The IBM X3850x6 is a beast from 2014 with up to 4 CPUs and 96 memory sockets. This one has 3TB of RAM...

[@davidgustafik7968]

Engineer: So, how much RAM shall we put into this? Product design: Yes.

[@don_prince]

The X3950 x6 is basically two x3850x6's combined :)

[@Rob2]

My new home system has only 4 modules like that. And I considered it to be a lot... well, I still do.

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

It considers all the RAM in an entire city to belong to itself but it wants even more? 😅

[@PlaywithJunk]

@@don_prince Too bad they didn't connect the two with cables... I have 4 x3850 here. But they used a bigger midplane that connects all 8 CPUs and the other stuff.

[@PlaywithJunk]

... Product design: All!

[@jimsvideos7201]

Say what you want about IBM, they know how to put a chassis together. I don't even want to think about what that was worth new! Happy holidays, see you in the new year!

[@tubularmonkeymaniac]

Always loved their workstations. Lenevo laptop's are still great.

[@drummerboy2215]

Those Fans sound like The ACA Allertor 125 Tornado Siren

[@jimsvideos7201]

@@drummerboy2215 Now I'm curious... 🤔

[@glenslick2774]

IBM engineers - Holy Toledo! Somebody had fun.

[@GeoffSeeley]

Wow, crazy engineering in this beast! Thanks for the teardown.

[@ThomasJakober]

No screwdriver needed, fully earthquake resistant. Genious design.

[@JohnMullee]

No dropped screws rolling around under circuit boards. Or screwdrivers

[@tsr207]

Spent many a happy night swapping out PSUs and fans - the "hot swap" memory never quite worked correctly though - thanks for the memories of working on these marvellous servers

[@drummerboy2215]

It litteraly sounds like a Tornado Warning Siren

[@stevaras]

Nice product tour and teardown keep it on! Brought back some nice memories from early 2000's and for many years as a systems engineer in an IBM authorized service provider. The xSeries went very far and the x3850 was the last beast (flagship) model produced before IBM sold to Lenovo the x86 servers' division in 2014 (laptops have already been sold in 2008). My true love however goes to IBM BladeCenter servers for their ultimate engineering... an idea for a future video maybe in case you have something in hand reach!

[@RoyHess666]

Have you guys noticed the thickness of the backplane PCB? Like how many layers was that?

[@glenslick2774]

Deckard looking at the backplane PCB: Must be expensive. Rachael: Very.

[@wkovdyd]

taking it apart - I'm hearing "Daisy, Daisy .." !

[@PlaywithJunk]

2001... 🙂

[@beamer.electronics]

Blimey, what a machine!

[@Petertronic]

More fans than an HVAC unit. Amazing beast!

[@MiettedeThonTomate]

Just for the sake of curiosity you would have mentioned the price of this server. I saw some on ebay and the value varies from 1.000 to 20.000 $ lol. I wish you a very happy 2024 new year Sir. Keep the awesome job on so you can amaze us all!

[@BrendaEM]

Cool box and video demo! Thank you. Even though it's probably not that fast for its intended use, I would love to have a unit like that for doing CFD Computational Fluid Dynamic solving. I am thinking that my next computer: might be old. I need memory, at least 256GB of RAM, but the more the merrier, so I might get an old Epyc or Threadripper.

[@sapperlott]

That's quite a step up in packaging design from the X5s I was playing with. The CPU modules seem to have been inspired by the Flex node design.

[@AnonyDave]

10 minute startup, sounds about the same as a sun T4 from the same era I have. 128GB memory check on that lil' guy takes forever. Probably the similar time since it just has a whole lot less actual cores (4 cores, 32 threads because t4 series ultrasparc)

[@drummerboy2215]

Those Fans Sound like the ACA Allertor 125 9/12 Port Tornado Sirens

[@liamhotspur9182]

I loved IBM servers and the Thinkpads back then. I have no idea where they are now compared to the competition but this machine here is just beautiful.

[@PlaywithJunk]

First of all, IBM has stopped manufacturing "computers*, they only make mainframes. All the small stuff is now made by Lenovo. In fact they were already the real manufacturer while iBM put it's badge on it. This x3850 seems to come from a totally different factory anyway. There is no comparison to other models from that time. It seems that someone could realize his own design project. I mean even the round vent holes speak a completely different design language. My personal favorite now is Dell. They improved quality and services a lot while HP and Lenovo got worse. And Lenovo has never been really good...

[@liamhotspur9182]

@@PlaywithJunk Thanks for that update! Did you ever get one of that facebook, amazon or google rack computers in your hands?

[@PlaywithJunk]

@@liamhotspur9182 No. I think they are processed directly on the sites where they are used. I assume that kind of hardware is hard to get. But from what I have seen in videos (there are some good ones from Google), it's not too exciting. They have wast amounts of servers but each one not terribly powerful but customized to the needs of the companies. Most servers are not much more than a mainboard, some brackets and a few hard drives. The rack is the housing...

[@liamhotspur9182]

@@PlaywithJunk Hey! I saw today, you still can buy IBM RISC Servers now called Power System (AS/400) and still very flexible to configurate. I would buy them! I saw German based Oetker enterprise (Dr. Oetker) 100% running IBM Power Systems.

[@soniclab-cnc]

What an absolute unit. Crazy over engineered beast.

[@Gastell0]

10:00 - That PCB is THICK

[@henninghoefer]

Amazing how different "high end" looked 9 years ago ... nowadays, the case would have to be full of GPUs instead 😆

[@StanislavLapshansky]

This is definetely not a junk!

[@iwontlagback7236]

We need to see it run cinebench !

[@SproutyPottedPlant]

That’s must be IBMs big boy beefy Lego set! The battery powered diagnostic lights ♥️♦️♣️♠️ its also winning in the noise department and makes a wonderful and impressive sound 😃👍 it would only take about 20 of my wimpy little Dells to come close to it in storage that it has in RAM alone 😅

[@onderol]

you called this server "old" but I m still working with servers with E5 series cpus :( thanks for great video.

[@TedBackus]

i ran BOINC for years , was part of the TPU group.

[@don_prince]

I have the 3950 x6 at home, am looking everywhere for a reasonably priced GPU IO book (the full lenght IO Book), love the thing!

[@alexdichi]

Impresionante, nunca veré algo así por Paraguay 😂

[@semifavorableuncircle6952]

I wonder what 3TB of ram cost back in 2014. Especially with IBM pricing.

[@zebo-the-fat]

If you need to ask, you can't afford it!

[@leopiipponen7693]

Very modular systems design, almost building lego bricks :)

[@ChipGuy]

Very interesting. Stuff that usually not many people get to see. What is going to happen with this power hungry server now?

[@PaulaBean]

I was wondering too: Is this thing still economically viable?

[@petergplus6667]

When I hear those fans I forever was already wondering if there wasn't a more "laminar" way of cooling servers.

[@zawatowski]

Thanks for showing us this enterprise hardware. I do wonder what your company specializes in. I’ve seen a lot of different things passing through your hands. I’m guessing broker services? 3d party spare parts supplier?

[@PlaywithJunk]

No, it's IT services and repair and also medical equipment maintenance. We take old hardware to fill up our stock. There are still customers everywhere who use even older hardware.

[@theaustralianconundrum]

Been subscribed to your channel since #1,897 subscriber. It's always fascinating! I hope you have a great 2024.@@PlaywithJunk

[@pi3dez4]

Is it possible for a IBM Flex System review to appear?

[@chrisridesbicycles]

I don‘t know much about server operation but how often in the use of such a thing are all the fancy retractable handles used? This must be crazy overengineering.

[@PlaywithJunk]

Well... you need them to install the server in a rack. And after 5-10 years you use them to throw it away 🙂 Maybe one or two repairs in the meantime.

[@chrisridesbicycles]

@@PlaywithJunk So it could be just something you hook in and put in the drawer afterwards. But if you are IBM…

[@tsr207]

The mounting rails were known for loosing the ball racers that allowed the server to slide in and out. The rail would move - you would hear the pitter patter of the ball bearings falling out - then the handles would be used to stop it toppling over

[@NUTTER8291]

So what happens when you guys get these beasts? Are they decommissioned and scrapped? What happens to them ?

[@PlaywithJunk]

In this case, I will erase all hard drives from customer data and then one or two machines go to stock for spare parts. The rest will go to scrap. After removing the memory of course 🙂

[@alles_muss_anders_werden]

What is the OS that is running on such a system ? I would think Linux would be a good option ... 😊

[@PlaywithJunk]

Any operating system that runs on a PC should work in that server. I booted even a DOS flashdrive to run Wipedrive 🙂

[@dorfschmidt4833]

Ich nehme an, daß diese alten Kisten Dank AMD Epyc obsolet sind ? ☺

[@jms019]

Wow ! What was this machine’s price ?

[@PlaywithJunk]

Starting price was $19'000 in 2013. I guess that was for a relatively empty machine. With 4 CPUs and 3TB RAM (max. 6TB) it would have cost well over $100'000

[@Zoey_yea_boom]

IBM understand downtime is everything. everything can be swapped out in 10mins. Love the engineering but hate the price. But then you can justify it with how much downtime would cost and it only takes one outage and a please explain. Thanks for showing it off :)

[@Rob2]

But after you have swapped the defective component within 10 mins, you still have to wait 10 more mins for the BIOS tests before the system boots. I often wonder why those servers that are designed with such large uptime percentages always take so long to boot... it is not only memory testing, ALL the tasks take such a long time. Almost like there is a sleep(10) after every message displayed.

[@giornikitop5373]

@@Rob2 i'm not familiar with this model but i guess that's true if you swap the board or something like that. most of the rest subsystems can be swaped while the system is working.

[@benbaselet2026]

@@Rob2You only want to do scheduled shutdown and you don't want to do them often. So it does not matter if POST takes 10 seconds or 10 minutes. You just want to know that you don't have to do it unscheduled again for a year or two.

[@Rob2]

@@benbaselet2026 For many operating systems it is not realistic to run two years between security-update related reboots, especially for the one from Redmond. A month is more common. Of course you can put a hypervisor in between and hope that it can run 2 years between upgrades.

[@benbaselet2026]

@@Rob2 Not everything is online. I have systems with 2-5 years uptime. Also some of them are Windows XP.

[@thiagomitsuuchi4106]

i can use Window 7 + 3ds Max + Vray to rendering?

[@PlaywithJunk]

I don't know... I guess you can. What is your question?

[@ScottGrammer]

But will it play Crysis?

[@thegeforce6625]

Could probably run it software rendered.

[@zebo-the-fat]

I bet it plays Doom great!

[@gile849]

music dizaster omg

[@scose]

🤑🤑🤑

[@5argetech56]

IBM x3850 X6 Server 4x Xeon E7-8880 v3 6TB DDR4 RAM 8x 3.8TB SSD 4x 1400W PSU Rails FC = $31K *WOW* *WOW* *WOW* 😳😳😳

[@Rob2]

That is not too bad. Imagine what it would cost if it were from Apple 🙂

[@5argetech56]

OMG! Reading that just made me feel faint!🤑🤑@@Rob2

[@dmtd2388]

@@Rob2 apple= trash and only for retail marketing nothing more just basic computers and phones

[@Rob2]

@@5argetech56 When it was from Apple, the dummy modules that cover unused slots would cost $1000 🙂

[@torquemada1971]

I guess Switzerland is completely devoid of any dust. None of the machines you show have any.

[@cairnex4473]

Switzerland might not be but most data-centres try to actively avoid it...

[@KonuralpBalcik]

nice junk I need one 🤣