Intel Exiting OEM Server Market

[Lurick]

Summary

Intel has confirmed it is exiting the OEM server business and selling that business unit to MiTAC. This is not to say they're stopping the CPU production for servers just the rebranding of ODM servers and whatnot.

 

Quotes

Quote

In line with Intel’s continued efforts to prioritize investments in its IDM 2.0 strategy, we have made the difficult decision to exit our Data Center Solutions Group (DSG). As part of this plan, MiTAC, an edge-to-cloud IT solutions provider and longstanding ODM partner of DSG, will have the right to manufacture and sell products based on our designs. We are focused on ensuring the DSG team and its stakeholders are supported during this transition. (Source: Intel Spokesperson to STH)

 

My thoughts

This isn't completely surprising given the recent rumors but the fact they're exiting the OEM server space is still something of a shock to some. This isn't to say they are leaving the Server CPU market by any means as that would be suicide to their business, just the OEM chassis portion is going.

 

Sources

https://www.servethehome.com/breaking-intel-exiting-the-server-business-selling-to-mitac/

[igormp]

I didn't even know Intel sold entire systems lol

 

Selling it off sounds like a good decision, I doubt it brought much of a profit to them.

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, igormp said:

I didn't even know Intel sold entire systems lol

 

Selling it off sounds like a good decision, I doubt it brought much of a profit to them.

Intel ODM servers used to be very wide spread. Over time that market drifted more and more over to Supermicro, Quanta, Inspur etc. I still have an Intel server sold as an Intel server (LGA1366 gen). They were a nice way of getting a good design with reliably well implemented firmware for cheap on the used market that didn't come with any proprietary things that HPE/Dell/IMB/Lenovo did. 

[igormp]

5 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Intel ODM servers used to be very wide spread. Over time that market drifted more and more over to Supermicro, Quanta, Inspur etc. I still have an Intel server sold as an Intel server (LGA1366 gen). They were a nice way of getting a good design with reliably well implemented firmware for cheap on the used market that didn't come with any proprietary things that HPE/Dell/IMB/Lenovo did. 

Come to think of it, I guess ODM servers weren't never that big here, in most places here it'll probably be from one of the big brands. 

[SorryBella]

2 hours ago, igormp said:

I didn't even know Intel sold entire systems lol

Dont tell em about Intel motherboards, lol.

[igormp]

3 minutes ago, SorryClaire said:

Dont tell em about Intel motherboards, lol.

I had a LGA775 haha

[AlexGoesHigh]

8 hours ago, SorryClaire said:

Dont tell em about Intel motherboards, lol.

i still miss their boards, they were ugly AF and sometime the feature set was odd but they were built like tanks, amazing for budget setups.

[Needfuldoer]

Every non-whitebox server appliance I've seen for years has been a SuperMicro or debadged Dell PowerEdge. I can't even remember the last Intel server I saw...

[AnonymousGuy]

9 hours ago, AlexGoesHigh said:

i still miss their boards, they were ugly AF and sometime the feature set was odd but they were built like tanks, amazing for budget setups.

Yeah, Intel boards always felt like they were physically reliable and had a BIOS that worked.

 

I loathe modern BIOS's where you can't even set the voltage anymore without playing a roulette game of "maybe it'll decide +0 offset means 1.7V"

[Brooksie359]

1 hour ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Yeah, Intel boards always felt like they were physically reliable and had a BIOS that worked.

 

I loathe modern BIOS's where you can't even set the voltage anymore without playing a roulette game of "maybe it'll decide +0 offset means 1.7V"

Honestly that is the most frustrating thing. You input something into the bios and then you look at your monitoring software and it's completely different and aren't sure what is wrong the bios or your monitoring software. It's why I don't mess with the bios other than setting xmp profiles anymore. Not worth the hassle and potential instability to mess with things. I mean even when I did use to overclock I always had the issue where my system would be stable 99% of the time but I will still have my computer randomly crash on me like once a week vs stock it would never be an issue. It's incredibly hard to test an overclock for those random fringe situations that sometimes happen that makes your system crash often enough to make it annoying but not often enough to be really considered unstable. I mean if your system passes basically every synthetic test you give it but still get random crashes every so often not much you can really do tbh other than tweak settings hoping you will go two weeks without crashing instead of one. But at the end of the day I had to ask myself was it worth all the headache for maybe 10% increase in performance at best?

[AnonymousGuy]

5 minutes ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly that is the most frustrating thing. You input something into the bios and then you look at your monitoring software and it's completely different and aren't sure what is wrong the bios or your monitoring software. It's why I don't mess with the bios other than setting xmp profiles anymore. Not worth the hassle and potential instability to mess with things. I mean even when I did use to overclock I always had the issue where my system would be stable 99% of the time but I will still have my computer randomly crash on me like once a week vs stock it would never be an issue. It's incredibly hard to test an overclock for those random fringe situations that sometimes happen that makes your system crash often enough to make it annoying but not often enough to be really considered unstable. I mean if your system passes basically every synthetic test you give it but still get random crashes every so often not much you can really do tbh other than tweak settings hoping you will go two weeks without crashing instead of one. But at the end of the day I had to ask myself was it worth all the headache for maybe 10% increase in performance at best?

Same.  I set XMP and assume that's all the mobo designer ever really "validated" to be stable.  Everything else feels like they're just checking a box that they integrated it from a firmware package provided by Intel/AMD but didn't test it or document it.

 

I do miss the days of 50% overclocks (E8400 shoutout) but Intel/NV/AMD all realized it's profitable to do it from the factory.

[pas008]

1 hour ago, Brooksie359 said:

Honestly that is the most frustrating thing. You input something into the bios and then you look at your monitoring software and it's completely different and aren't sure what is wrong the bios or your monitoring software. It's why I don't mess with the bios other than setting xmp profiles anymore. Not worth the hassle and potential instability to mess with things. I mean even when I did use to overclock I always had the issue where my system would be stable 99% of the time but I will still have my computer randomly crash on me like once a week vs stock it would never be an issue. It's incredibly hard to test an overclock for those random fringe situations that sometimes happen that makes your system crash often enough to make it annoying but not often enough to be really considered unstable. I mean if your system passes basically every synthetic test you give it but still get random crashes every so often not much you can really do tbh other than tweak settings hoping you will go two weeks without crashing instead of one. But at the end of the day I had to ask myself was it worth all the headache for maybe 10% increase in performance at best?

 

 

1 hour ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Same.  I set XMP and assume that's all the mobo designer ever really "validated" to be stable.  Everything else feels like they're just checking a box that they integrated it from a firmware package provided by Intel/AMD but didn't test it or document it.

 

I do miss the days of 50% overclocks (E8400 shoutout) but Intel/NV/AMD all realized it's profitable to do it from the factory.

 

dont even think its that close to 10% unless you buying some expensive cooling and alot of time

 

I miss the huge overclocks and silicon lottery

was like gambling and playing a game

I was kinda playing the undervolt and maybe a slight downclock  as the same game along with checking voltages because couple boards seem to come set  to high voltage on auto with whatever bios first shipped with board

i'm all about keeping it 75-80

 

otherwise I go into bios for xmp, cpu fan curve, boot order, pcie gen, small other things that really dont matter but just to check

last cpu i had some fun oc'n was 5600x maybe 5% lol

gave up on gpus entirely

[Brooksie359]

6 hours ago, pas008 said:

 

 

 

dont even think its that close to 10% unless you buying some expensive cooling and alot of time

 

I miss the huge overclocks and silicon lottery

was like gambling and playing a game

I was kinda playing the undervolt and maybe a slight downclock  as the same game along with checking voltages because couple boards seem to come set  to high voltage on auto with whatever bios first shipped with board

i'm all about keeping it 75-80

 

otherwise I go into bios for xmp, cpu fan curve, boot order, pcie gen, small other things that really dont matter but just to check

last cpu i had some fun oc'n was 5600x maybe 5% lol

gave up on gpus entirely

Oh I an saying 10% is at best. Definitely not something you will see consistently especially when alot of things react differently to increases in frequency. Some things you won't see much of a difference where as other things might be very frequency sensitive in which case then you might see something like 10% uplifts. If you could get higher than 10% consistently then overclocking might be more interesting but there is no way any company would leave that much performance on the table if they can help it even if they have to sell a halo tier product like the KS from Intel.