Through a detailed breakdown of the metals required to manufacture and interconnect IT components in a High-Performance Computing (HPC) supercomputer, we introduce a novel metric for evaluating its environmental impact: the Metal Usage Effectiveness (MUE). This metric is based on the abiotic depletion potential (ADP), an indicator of the non-renewable material consumption relative to remaining resources. We define this metric as the ADP (expressed in kg antimony equivalents) caused by the extraction of metals required to manufacture and interconnect IT components, divided by the supercomputer computing power (in FLOPS). The MUE, insightful on the supercomputer manufacturing cost relatively to its computing power, complements existing metrics mainly focused on the use phase cost, such as the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) or the Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE). It could be a first step toward a more complete Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) of supercomputers and, by extension, data centers. We provide models for estimating copper and gold content in compute hardware components and interconnects of an HPC supercomputer, and apply them to Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer.