Quoting Craig Sanders (cas@taz.net.au):
big name brand servers (intel, dell, hp, etc) often make it difficult by using proprietary parts and, worse, proprietary connectors and cables. and non-standard sizes. all sorts of crappy little tricks to make it difficult to swap in third-party parts.
Yes, this annoyance goes _way_ back. Even back in XT clone days, we hobbyists noticed that generic Taiwanese clone gear was greatly more standardised, and easier / more inexpensive to work on, than any of the brand-name gear. Typically much more IBM-compatible, too (which then mattered).
2nd tier brands like supermicro, you can pretty much use standard third-party fans (noctua make some excellent quiet fans, e.g. 120mm fans blowing 60, 70 CFM or more at under 18db or so). i suppose they have to, their stuff would be too expensive if they couldn't source commodity parts, while the big names obviously think the lock-in is worth charging their customers more for (partly because their customers don't care too much about price, they're covering their arses by buying big-name brands that their bosses recognise).
Indeed. Only the major manufacturers _can_ standardise on bespoke parts, because any smaller company would get destroyed by parts churn from their suppliers. That is, for example, my old firm VA Linux Systems were[1] obliged to pick components very carefully to attempt to ensure a supply pipeline over the product production life of the models the parts were spec'd for. If a key upstream part suddenly were EOLed, that would be a huge problem unless our engineers were able to quickly find a highly compatible replacement from that or a different supplier. The firm in some cases bought up huge stockpiles of a particular component against future use on the assembly line, such as one particular PSU custom-manufactured for the firm by Converter Concepts. Before I departed employment at VA Linux Systems, I made sure to scrounge half a dozen of those as spares, because I heard they were selling at premium prices, used, on eBay. Meanwhile, my employer made the mistake of oversupplying, and ultimately took a big loss on excess inventory. (I still have my hoard, but doubt they're still a supplier's delight in the market. Such is life.) But in other cases, the firm guessed well: The firm chose Quantum's Atlas V SCSI 18GB and 73GB hard drives as their standard drive for various 2U and 1U rackmount servers, estimating correctly that Quantum would keep that product alive a very long time, and VA did _not_ lay in a big stockpile. This proved a much smarter gamble than the PSU one. FWIW, each drive's option ROM was reflashed to a particular firmware revision that tested best for use with RAID on Linux (either md software RAID or Mylex hardware-RAID cards). Apparently, option firmware version made a difference. Some of the parts and assembly problems were legendary. I'll have to tell LUV the one about the pencil marks on the RAM sticks, soon.
With the aftermarket fan, it's ultra-cool and almost completely silent, and some day I hope to make it a 'stealth' modern workstation with a 2010s
why 2010 when 2015/2016 stuff is so much better, cooler, less power, and faster?
I feel bad following up to say this, but what I said and meant was '2010s', i.e. this decade, not 2010 the year. [1] Once again, I thank LUV for the chance to speak the Queen's English. ;-> Locally, I am obliged to say 'VA Linux Systems was', or would be thought either eccentric, confused, or both: Americans and Canadians construe business enterprises _mostly_ in the singular, but also intermittently throw in pronouns 'they' and 'we' at unpredictable intervals.