Wow nice find Boddy, you're making it very tempting! My wallet will not like you
Ah yes you only need CPU + RAM, but for ideal functioning it should include the black plastic shroud for airflow, and the HDD cages for convenience. I just kind of like getting the full thing.
"What do you plan to use it for?"
*mumbles*. Haha I honestly don't have a real use case for them. It would be a lot of fun to play around with the hardware. Super overpowered file server? It's the one thing keeping me hesitant. I don't need it. Like at all. But I want it. So if I can get it relatively cheap it'll be a nice toy.
"I'm very new to server stuff and not very knowledgeable, though I learnt a lot in these forums."
Ah well the server stuff I would do is install esxi ( a hypervisor from vm-ware, google would you your friend in learning about this). Basically it lets you run multiple operating systems, virtually separated. So its fun to play around with and set up your own convoluted home lab. The reason these specific ones are appealing is because 2011-1 motherboards in australia go for upwards of 500-600 AUD. This thing is half the whole system for much less than that. It is to my knowledge the cheapest way to build a 2011-1 system anywhere. And if you're really greedy for power, it's actually the cheapest way to build 2 systems since it is 2 nodes! It doesn't come with any of the nice features of a fancy motherboard. But it was designed by facebooks opencompute project to be super reliable and free of other crap. It all kind of just makes me nerd out. Now to convince the financial decider that it's a good idea.
I really appreciate all the help you've given me. A month ago I gave up on getting a 400!USD quote on this, just for shipping.
For the ram, i assume its cheaper to bulk it with the chassis purchase so it ships together?