Where does everyone buy Supermicro motherboards?
When you try to find a vendor for supermicro they all just seem pretty jank and scammy. I don’t like purchasing these items from amazon or ebay, but it seems like that is the best option.
With “best option” you mean “cheapest option”?
That would be ok for homelabs and such, but for production I would recommend to buy through supported sales channels.
If buying new, you may be able to get what you want from the Supermicro store. You can also check SHI, the last three servers I bought went through them.
For used there are a bunch of places that sell them in various states, those places may also be able to sell you new stuff. Ebay has been fine for cheap used stuff, almost everything in my lab was from ebay and used, I think the network switch is the only thing that claimed it was new.
Drives and RAM usually get purchased new, unless it is old like DDR3 ECC ram for servers (again ebay).
@inju, lol. I don’t mean cheapest, but I think it’s reasonable to not expect to pay the list manufacture price on components. It seems like there aren’t many options besides the obvious ones like CDW (very expensive). I’m just concerned with getting decent warranty coverage because it seems like Supermicro’s method of warranty coverage is through the vendor.
@Greg_E I’m really only looking for components and specifically motherboards. Do you have any experience dealing with purchasing supermicro motherboards from ebay? I purchased one and the seller claims that it comes with 1-year manufacture warranty, but I need to verify this with supermicro.
For anything that might have a “warranty”, you are going to need to find some of the vendors that decomission systems and part them out. Anything old like an X10, ebay will be cheapest but without warranty, even some of the X11 boards. And generally buying an entire server will be cheaper than the boards alone.
Sometimes list prices are just that: list prices. And nothing that you really pay for. Cisco is an example of this.
However, of course you can buy things on Ebay. It’s just that you should check the seller. I wouldn’t buy from random Ebay users. I did buy Supermicro servers myself from Ebay, but those were from companies focussed on selling refurbished hardware. And sometimes you can even make some deals with these companies. Like getting an addtional 10% discount or some extra hardware or similar.
Regarding warranty it’s sometimes a balance between costs and risks. I was once responsible for Cisco videoconf systems. When having dozens of those cheap SX10 systems the calculation was simple: it was way cheaper to buy an additional system instead of paying 20-30x 150 €/year for a system that cost 1700 €.
When your cost/risk analysis shows a similar result, there is no reason to buy expensive warranty contracts.
For me and my use of servers a good near-by refurbished hardware seller is a good compromise. You’ll get tested hardware and some sort of very limited warranty (like DoA or even weeks). I’m pretty sure there will be a seller somewhere in your reach…