Question: is there a market for servers twice the size they are. But a fraction of the cost.
I for example have really consolidated servers in recent years. VMs are fantastic. But the result is that I have lots of Data Center space spare.
I would love to buy servers of similar power consumption but larger foot print, for less dollars than small ones. Assuming that a lot of limitations and cost go into shrinking current systems.
Or are there other issues like distance between components that then come into play?
Due to how IC fabrication works, and the laws of physics, that is not really possible. Larger ICs will definitely cost more simply because less fit on a single wafer --- and defects will be more common, use more power because to use the water analogy there is more 'inertia' to move around the circuits, and also be slower as a result.
Maybe see if you can turn up old 4U or 8U chassis, and reuse them with old motherboards you have or find lying around. As another commentator said, airflow will be excellent, and you'd have lots of space for local disks too.
If your situation allows it, you could rent out the spare space you have, either by providing standard colocation or by racking old but usable stuff you have spare and making it available (either the real hardware or VMs). Depending on your location and what your pricing could be, this could be a nice side project. One or two cabinets could net a couple hundred (maybe thousand) per month easily, I think.
Another thing: maybe look into engineering-sample (ES) chips (like Xeons) on eBay. For some reason the market is flooded with them, so snap them up while they're around, if you can. You could build some nice kit with them :P
[PS. If the idea of that side project sounds interesting - I wouldn't mind low-scale sysadmin experience, if it would be helpful. My email's in my profile.]
You could put in place servers with larger than normal chassis (4U?) and slow, low speed fans, 55W TDP passively cooled CPUs with big heatsinks on them. But I am curious what your power budget is, what kind of AC circuits are we talking about for each cabinet?
I would guess that, all other things being equal, you'd need more power and generate more heat, because there's more resistive wire to push electrons through. I could be completely wrong, though.
I for example have really consolidated servers in recent years. VMs are fantastic. But the result is that I have lots of Data Center space spare.
I would love to buy servers of similar power consumption but larger foot print, for less dollars than small ones. Assuming that a lot of limitations and cost go into shrinking current systems.
Or are there other issues like distance between components that then come into play?