The fastest way to overspend on a cost-effective server setup is buying cores and RAM you never use while starving the storage subsystem that actually limits Windows Server performance. In current 2026 deployments the pattern repeats: teams order dual-socket high-core CPUs for a domain controller or light file server, then license every core under the 16-core minimum rule, only to watch SQL or Hyper-V crawl because the disks cannot deli