HOW IT’S DONE
World of Warcraft Blade Server.
BACKGROUND:
Behold! We hold the World of Warcraft in our hands! OK, fine. Maybe just a part of it. Or a part of a part of it. And it doesn’t really fit in our hands. When Blizzard decided to upgrade its servers, it sold off the old equipment as collector’s pieces. Prepare to be Wo Wed as we take a look inside the insides of the World of Warcraft.
MAJOR TECH SPECS:
2 x dual-core AMD Opteron 275 processors @ 2.2GHz 6GB (2 x 2GB & 4 x 512MB) HP DDR-ECC RAM @ 400MHz CL3 HP Smart Array 6i SCSI controller card Broadcom BCM5704CKFB Ethernet CTLR single chip 10/100/1,000 300-pin HBGA Rage XL 215R3LASB41 graphics Compaq 170095-002 Pulse H5007 1000BASE-T magnetic modules NetPHY AM79C874VC low power 10/100-tx/fx Ethernet transceiver
KEY FINDINGS:
This particular server blade is an HP ProLiant BL25p that Blizzard decked out with a commemorative plate. It’s one of several server blades sustaining the Alterac Mountains from January 4, 2007 until July 21, 2010. The transparent panel covering all the mechanical madness inside provides shoddy protection, but is nonetheless ornate. -10% armor. +15% intellect. Twisting a few knobs is all that’s required to remove the SCSI controller, responsible for interfacing with hard drives, scanners, tape drives, and other alliance technologies. The DC power filter has an input of -43V ~ 57V at 13A max. That’s 546 watts of maximum power! As this is just a power filter, not a transformer, the output is almost the same: -43V ~ -57V at a maximum 12.4A. Once the server juice has been filtered, it is converted to the correct voltage by the power converter — two identical modules on top of each other, using the standoffs between them as a power relay. The output is 12V, 40A, for a whopping 480 watts. The WoW server blade has two dedicated hard drive bays: “A device or blank must occupy all bays during operation.” A T15 Torx screwdriver is strong enough to slay any beast, including that which stands in the way of removing this mobo. Repairability Score: 10 out of 10. No security screws; modular, easy-toaccess components. HP provides online maintenance repair documentation. It should be noted that these server blades are designed to be easily maintained and eventually disposed of. We appreciate HP being so mindful of the repair and maintenance aspect of its products.