EPYC for Desktop: It's finally here! (and cheap too)
EPYC for Desktop: It's finally here! (and cheap too)
Not really. It's just a normal Zen 4 CPU with some server features like ECC memory support.
The biggest downfall of these chips is they have the same 28 PCI-E lanes as any consumer grade Zen 4 CPU. Quite the difference between that and the cheapest EPYC CPUs outside the 4000 series.
You're going to run in to some serious I/O shortages if trying to fit a 10gbe card, an HBA card for storage, and a graphics card or two and some NVME drives.
49Not really. It’s just a normal Zen 4 CPU with some server features like ECC memory support.
I'm pretty sure all the Zen CPUs have supported ECC memory, ever since the first generation of them.
13A lot of the Zen based APUs don't support ECC. The next thing is if it supports registered or unregistered modules - everything up to threadripper is unregistered (though I think some of the pro parts are registered), Epycs are registered.
That makes a huge difference in how much RAM you can add, and how much you pay for it.
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Probably best to look at it as a competitor to a Xeon D system, rather than any full-size server.
We use a few of the Dell XR4000 at work (https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/ipovw/poweredge-xr4510c), as they're small, low power, and able to be mounted in a 2-post comms rack.
Our CPU of choice there is the Xeon D-2776NT (https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/226239/intel-xeon-d2776nt-processor-25m-cache-up-to-3-20-ghz/specifications.html), which features 16 cores @ 2.1GHz, 32 PCIe 4.0 lanes, and is rated 117W.
The ostensibly top of this range 4584PX, also with 16 cores but at double the clock speed, 28 PCIe 5.0 lanes, and 120W seems like it would be a perfectly fine drop-in replacement for that.
(I will note there is one significant difference that the Xeon does come with a built-in NIC; in this case the 4-port 25Gb "E823-C", saving you space and PCIe lanes in your system)
As more PCIe 5.0 expansion options land, I'd expect the need for large quantities of PCIe to diminish somewhat. A 100Gb NIC would only require a x4 port, and even a x8 HBA could push more than 15GB/s. Indeed, if you compare the total possible PCIe throughput of those CPUs, 32x 4.0 is ~63GB/s, while 28x 5.0 gets you ~110GB/s.
Unfortunately, we're now at the mercy of what server designs these wind up in. I have to say though, I fully expect it is going to be smaller designs marketed as "edge" compute, like that Dell system.
3We'll see if they even make them. I can't imagine there's a huge customer base who really needs to cram all that I/o through only two or 4 lanes. Why make these ubiquitous cards more expensive if most of the customers buying them are not short PCI-E lanes? So far most making use of 5.0 are graphics and storage devices. I've not seen any hint of someone making a sas or 10 gbe card that uses 5.0 and fewer lanes. Most cards for sale today still use 3.0 let alone 4.0.
I might as well just drop the cash on a real EPYC CPU with 128 lanes if I'm only going to be able to buy cutting edge expansion cards that companies may or may not be motivated to make.
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Agreed the PCI layout is bad. My problem is the x16 slot.
I would prefer 8 slots/onboard with PCIe5 x2 from CPU. From the chipset 2 slots of PCIe4 x2. This would probably adequate IO. Aiming for 2x25 Gbits performance.
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This is really nice for home servers. There has been a huge gap for years where the choice was a 16-64 core high watt monstrosity or use a 4 year old server CPU before every server went to high core counts.
8cores with ecc is perfect for my home use.
14I'm curious, what do you or anorher "classic"(?) home user do that needs more than like an old intel 6500 with say 32GB RAM and some 1 TB SSD (hoarding etc goes to the NAS right?) of storage?
I know dockers consume, or so I have heard, but even a webserver, streaming etc is that really eating up the (pcie)bandwith?
I'm just a low end tinkerer who likes to buy over specced stuff so I wonder what's you all doing with yours I guess!
4Plex, Blue Iris, Minecraft mod servers for the kids. I'll often use the server CPU for video filtering/encoding home videos off of VHS tapes because the nnedi3 filter takes a lot of CPU.
Years ago I lost data on a nas because the ram wasn't ECC. So I won't buy/build any PC without ECC unless it's only going to be used for web browsing/gaming.
3We're on the same boat. I keep being told that all I get is "overkill", but I like to think of it as "future-proffing", even though I'll probably upgrade something in my box within 3 months 🤣. Self-delusion my wife calls it. Some people don't believe in God, I don't believe in overkill.
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For what use case though? Intel has nice 10-30W cpus. The trick to power consumption is to look at modern CPUs instead of digging out an old 2500k just because you still have one and aren't using it.
What id actually love to see though is ARM in the compact desktop space. If nothing else, just to see how well it can do against x86-64.
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3Threadripper already accomplished all of this years ago. My TR2970WX has 24 cores/48 threads, 48 PCI-E lanes, and it supports ECC and non-ECC RAM. My AsRock Rack board has BMC support as well.
The Threadripper series was the perfect workstation CPU. I've had mine for a few years and it can handle anything I throw at it, it can easily transcode 2-3 4K videos while doing multiple other things.
It wasn't cheap though, it was like $650 on sale, originally like a grand or so.
2Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters NAS Network-Attached Storage Plex Brand of media server package SSD Solid State Drive mass storage
3 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 14 acronyms.
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