Ever wondered what fuels the World of Warcraft? Well wonder no more, iFixit has gracefully acquired an old retired WoW Server Blade.

This particular server blade is an HP ProLiant BL25p that Blizzard decked out with a commemorative plate. Wow.

This is one of several server blades sustaining the Altercac Mountains from January 4, 2007 till July 21, 2010.

The commemorative plate also bears the signatures of many of the key WoW developers.

The transparent panel covering all the mechanical madness inside the server blades provides shoddy protection, but is nonetheless ornate.

How much RAM does it take to create the high peaks that rise up north of the Hillsbrad Foothills? It seems the magic number is six.

Although there are a total of 8 RAM slots in the server blade, this model only fills six of them.

There are four 512 MB and two 2 GB PC-3200 DDR modules.

Memory IC Identification (only 1 is labeled of each):

Texas Instruments SN74SSTVF16859 13-26 bit registered buffers

Microchip (formerly Microchip) AT34C04 4 Kb serial EEPROM

Samsung K4H510438C-ZCCC 512 Mb DDR SDRAM

Renesas (formerly ICS) ICSLP857AKL registered buffers (likely)

SK Hynix DDR SDRAM

This is highly reminiscent of the classic pull my finger bit—but then again who can resist such a request? Fine...pull we will.

We were expecting Frost Wolves, but instead we found a hard drive data cable connector.

Twisting a few knobs is all that is required to remove the SCSI controller from the motherboard.

HP Part Number 355895-002

The SCSI contoller (pronounced "scuzzie"), is responsible for interfacing with a whole number of things: hard drives, scanners, tape drives, and other alliance technologies.

SCSI Inteface IC Identification:

HP 244651-002 processor (likely)

Macronix parallel NOR flash memory

Microchip (formerly Atmel) AT24C02AN and AT24C08AN 2 K and 8 K serial EEPROM memory

Analog Devices ADM3202A High Speed RS-232 2-ch. interface controller

Texas Instruments (formerly Unitrode) UCC5672PWP 2.7 - 5V multimode terminator

ON Semiconductor (formerly Fairchild) MC74LCX08 quad AND-gate

ON Semiconductor (formerly Fairchild) LM1597AN linear regulator

We had to mine deep into our pockets to acquire the proper tools for removing the power filter.

We were hoping that we could sell this wonderful item afterwards, but it's only worth 25 cents.

The DC Power filter has an input of -43 V ~ 57 V at 13 A max. That's 546 watts of maximum power!

Since this is just a power filter and not a transformer, the output is almost the same: -43 V ~-57 V at a maximum of 12.4 amps.

There's a Texas Instruments (formerly National Semiconductor) LM35CIM3 temperature sensor on-board to monitor the temps.

Once all the server juice has been filtered by the power filter, its gets converted to the correct voltage by the power converter.

The power converter is actually two identical modules stacked on top of each other, using the standoffs between them as a power relay.

The output of the power supply is 12 volts, 40 amps, for a whopping 480 watts.

As for chips, we find:

STMicroelectronics LM339 quad voltage comparator

Renesas (formerly Intersil) HIP2100 high frequency half-bridge driver

Texas Instruments (formerly Unitrode) UCC2808-1 low power PWM controller

Renesas (formerly NEC) PS2701-1 optocoupler

In the World of Warcraft, the Alterac Mountains are located somewhere between the Western Plaguelands and Hillsbrad, but they are stored right here on these hard drives.

Well, not these hard drives in particular. Blizzard probably wanted to keep all their data handy, so this server blade just comes with blanks.

The WoW server blade has two dedicated hard drive bays.

It seems "A device or blank must occupy all bays during operation."

How do you keep the snow from melting off the Ruins of Alterac? With eight—count 'em, eight—fans.

Each pair of fans draws .95 amps at 12 volts, for a total power rating of 85.2 watts. That really blows.

It looks like they threw everything—including the kitchen heat sink—at keeping those AMD processors cool.

Each dual-core AMD Opteron 275 processor provides 2.2 GHz of processing power.

What sort of sorcery is this? Worry not, our trusty T15 Torx screwdriver will slay any beast that stands in the way of removing the motherboard.

Huzzah! Have at thee ogre! We have conquered the mighty motherboard beast! Victory is ours!

The frontside of the motherboard:

Broadcom BCM5704CKFB Ethernet controller

ATI Technologies Rage XL 215R3LASB41 graphics (VGA)

Compaq 170095-002 server controller

Pulse H5007 1000BASE-T magnetic modules

AMD NetPHY AM79C874VC low power ethernet transceiver

IC Identification, continued:

Renesas (formerly ICS) ICS950402AFLF AMD system clock

Renesas (formerly ICS) ICS853031AY Differential/2.5 V / 3.3 V LVPECL/ECL fanout buffer

Microchip (formerly Atmel) AT24HC02BN and STMicroelectronics serial memory

Texas Instruments MAX3243C RS-232 line driver/receiver w/ ESD protection

Diodes Incorporated (formerly Pericom) PI5C3253QE dual 4:1 mux/demux analog switch

Diodes Incorporated (formerly Pericom) PI3C3125LE 4-Bit High-Bandwidth Bus Switch and Maxim Integrated MAX696EEE microprocessor supervisory circuit

Texas Instruments LM358 dual operational amplifier

The Ruins of Alterac! Or, the ruins of a server that hosted part of Alterac.

WoW Server Blade (HP ProLiant BL25p) Repairability Score: 10 out of 10

No security screws

Modular, easy to access components

HP provides online maintenance repair documentation.