Coly, who is my old colleague, bought a server computer in 2010. This server, which worth about 30,000 Yuan(RMB) 4 years ago, is composed by a ASUS KGPE-D16 motherboard, two AMD-6172 CPUs, and a 670W power supply. Recently, we need many servers to build some software, so I beg Coly to bring his 4 years old server to our small computer room in our office, and he promised.
After installing Linux on this server, I found out that only one CPU could boot up and run, the other one can’t be recognized by operation system. I asked Coly why, and he answered me maybe one CPU was broken.
I thought a mother-board with two sockets can only run one CPU was a great waste; therefore I bought a new CPU and setup it on the mother-board. But after that, the whole server couldn’t boot up totally. Having tried many ways but all failed, I turn to ask Coly to rescue his own old server.
At last, Coly come here and open the lid of the server case, and becomes astonishing very soon.
Coly: What on earth have you done to my server! Have you killed a man who sales silicone grease? You paste too much silicone grease on the CPU, even the edge of the sockets also be contaminated!
Me: Sorry, I just want to make sure the CPU will not be too hot.
Coly: Yeah, they will never be hot now —— because they can’t even run.
Then, Coly kneels on the floor and begin to clean all the silicon grease on the mother-board, which is a really hard work.
But, after clearing, the server still could not boot up.
Coly: Maybe the mother-board has broken, or maybe power supply got a shot-circuit. How much is a KGPE-D16 motherboard in TAOBAO (a very famous e-commerce website in China)? It cost me 8,000 Yuan 4 years ago.
Me: About 800 Yuan.
Coly: ….Mother board becomes cheap so fast. Then, how much is a 670W power supply in TAOBAO? It was 800 Yuan before.
Me: En, about 600 Yuan.
Coly: Ah-ha, looks power supply is a hedging tool for preserving monetary value. I reckon I will buy a large mount of power supply instead of stocks or gold to preserve my money .
In my opinion, a power supply is more stable than a mother board, so I bought a new mother board and luckily boot up the server with two CPU (24 cores). At last, no servers or machines are wasted, in my hand 🙂