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Table of Contents

• ↓ My New/Old PC/Server
• ↓ Refurbishing My Headlights
• ↓ Spying On Planes
• ↓ Heating Costs For An Older Home
• ↓ Repairing My Label Maker
• ↓ Adventures in 3D Printering
• ↓ Top Alternatives to arantius.com

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"The quick opening context: I had some spare computer memory lying around. After RAM prices were almost perfectly flat from early 2023 to mid 2025 things got wild. The common narrative is that many companies, in a drive to build new AI systems that they can charge money for, drove demand for memory up significantly. So from April 2025 to April 2026, RAM prices nearly tripled. This reminded me of the sticks I had lying around unused. Why are they unused? Because they're registered ECC memory, which won't work in a typical PC. Several parts of the PC including the CPU must be specifically built to work with ECC memory, and for some reason CPU makers only put this support in the types of CPUs designed for servers, not for standard PCs. But: I've built servers, and really what makes a server is the use it's put to. "Server" hardware can be used as a desktop. So I had a mission."

"Technically some "workstation" PCs are designed and built with ECC support as well. But with my experience building used-as-a-server type servers, I knew better what to look for and leverage there. I searched for both workstation and server parts, and I got lucky, finding a Supermicro X10DRi board being sold with dual Xeon E5-2680 v4 CPUs. It fully supports the memory I already have, and I got lucky that the power supply in my existing PC already had full support for dual CPU power connections. Asking price was $150, I haggled down to $130 because it turns out the seller was not including the heat sinks in the pictures. The pictured ones had fans integrated, they actually sold it with passive heat sinks. In a typical rack mount server case, this is fine. It's not what I wanted, though, so $20 off."

"This is an E-ATX board. It rather has to be, to fit both processors. The ATX standard has existed for many years, but in more unusual cases like this dual processor board makers will exceed that. So this motherboard won't fit in any case. Again I searched for a while to find a nice solution. I got lucky, again on marketplace, to find a local PC builder with a "scratch'n'dent" case selection. Their largest case was just big enough! I had to remove two (of the twelve it came with!) fans to fit in the big motherboard, and make some of my own mounting holes that didn't line up, but it fit."

"That was it, almost complete: motherboard and CPUs fit into a case, transferring power supply and disks from my existing PC, and voila! Almost. The motherboard did not come with an IO shield, but I found a compatible one already modeled online, and it fit and works great."

Key Topics & Focus Areas for arantius.com:

My New/Old PC/Server

Refurbishing My Headlights

Spying On Planes

Heating Costs For An Older Home

Repairing My Label Maker

Adventures in 3D Printering