By Patrick Kennedy
Publication Date: 2026-04-27 21:02:00
Power Consumption and Noise
In terms of power consumption, this was quite a bit of a win. At idle, the entire cluster, including the eight NVIDIA GB10 compute nodes, as well as the MikroTik CRS804 DDQ switch, used under 400W. When you add a 10Gbase-T switch, the power consumption jumps to around 430W at idle.
Under load, we often see power in the 900-950W range while running models like Kimi K2.5, including both switches.
With that said, there is a very clear path to getting the cluster to around 1.2kW by loading the CPUs more.
On the noise side, the cluster is surprisingly quiet. The loudest part, by far, was the MikroTik CRS804 DDQ switch. As a quick aside, I told one of MikroTik’s co-founders that noise would be a key differentiator. Still, 5-10 meters from the cluster, it is hard to hear. Closer than that, you will both hear and feel the heat from the systems.
Final Words
Many NVIDIA GB10 systems, many switches, and a lot ot time later, we are using this cluster every day. At the same time, this is a massive undertaking. The price of this entire cluster has increased by roughly $9000 since we put it together due to the rising memory costs. I think buying something like a DGX Station, a massive NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Edition setup, or even a dual Apple Mac Studio M3 Ultra 512GB platform (although you cannot buy these anymore) makes a lot of sense if…