By manufacturer
Dell PowerEdge HPE ProLiant Lenovo ThinkSystem Fujitsu Primergy Supermicro IBM System x / Power Acer AltosHardware refresh: give back years of life to a server already in production.
Deep cleaning of filters and heat exchangers, thermal paste replacement, fan inspection, RAID controller cache battery checks, firmware and licence verification. On a 3-4 year old enterprise server in production, a refresh typically recovers 10-20% of the performance lost to thermal and mechanical degradation.
Concrete work, not a "general check-up".
- Deep cleaning: controlled vacuuming and air blasting of heatsinks, heat exchangers and air intake filters. Dust and industrial residue measurably compromise heat dissipation.
- Thermal paste replacement on CPUs (and GPUs, where relevant) with enterprise-grade compound. Thermal paste degrades measurably after 3-4 years, even on systems in a controlled datacenter environment.
- Fan checks and fan curve calibration via BMC.
- Inspection of RAID controller cache batteries (BBU / flash backup): preventive replacement if capacity has dropped below threshold.
- Firmware and microcode updates against the vendor compatibility matrix, with a rollback plan.
- Written report covering pre/post-service status, sensors and recommendations at 6/12/24 months.
Three typical scenarios.
- Servers in production for 3-4 years with a perceived drop in performance. The "slowdown" is often recoverable thermal throttling, not actual CPU degradation.
- Pre-summer: ahead of the hot season, when datacenters and server rooms suffer most, a preventive refresh drastically reduces the risk of summer throttling.
- Ahead of a critical event: before a software upgrade, a migration or an expected peak. You start from a system in optimal condition.
The questions we get most often.
How long does a typical hardware refresh take?
On single-socket systems: 3-5 hours. On dual-socket or GPU systems: 5-8 hours. Plus post-service validation (4-12h of stress testing). The window is agreed with the customer, typically overnight or at the weekend to minimise impact.
Is a refresh better value than replacing the system?
It depends on the realistic 24-36 month TCO. If the workload does not demand more performance than it has today, a refresh is almost always the higher-ROI choice. If you need recent security features, lower power draw or consolidation, replacement may be the way to go — and we will tell you so honestly.
Does a refresh come with a "guaranteed X years of life"?
No — promising fixed lifespans on hardware would be dishonest. What a refresh does is bring the system back to the nominal conditions it was designed for: thermal margins restored, wear parts replaced, sensors within range. The remaining service life is whatever the original design promises for that model.
Plan your refresh before the summer.
Open a quote request: within 24-48h you get a targeted assessment of your model and an estimate for the work.