My first epyc build

[pututu]

Over the past one month, I managed to procure and setup my first amd epyc build. No more new xeon build

Below is the spec:-
MB: Supermicro H11SSL-i Rev 2.0 with BIOS 2.1 (Purchased from ebay. Seller from China)
CPU: 7401P (purchased as combo offer with MB)
RAM: Hynix 8 x 16GB DDR4-3200 ECC RDIMM (locally purchased - used)
HS: Noctua NH-U14S (purchased used from ebay)
Storage: 256GB SSD (Windows 10) and 512GB NVME drive (Ubuntu 20.04). Both cannibalized from previously sold xeon system.
Case: Fractal Design Meshify C mid tower. Cannibalized from sold xeon system.
PSU: Seasonic Focus 650W platinum. Cannibalized from sold xeon system.

All in all, I spent $1249 including shipping and taxes for the first four items above. I know the cpu is under-powered but still better than my xeon E5-2697v3 system that I sold off recently. The funding came primarily from the sold xeon sytem and one gimped Radeon VII card to a miner in [H] forum.

The 64 core epyc rome is still super-expensive. I'm still looking around but if anyone has a decent price, please let me know. Since this is a 1P system, 64 core would be ideal but if the 32 core price is so good, I might bite.

No plan on adding gpus as I only have 650W. There are plenty of pcie lanes thare are not populated.

Interestingly enough, I can overclock this system (only tested at 3.2GHz) using a program called zenstates but don't like the power consumption and efficiency. Oh, love the IPMI/iKVM that you can boot into the BIOS and decide if I want to boot up in Windows or Ubuntu without physically attaching a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

[Icecold]

Nice build! I agree on the IPMI/iKVM - it's 100% game changing. I would have used workstation or server boards that had it for every machine I've put together if I realized just how useful it was.

All the other parts are more or less what I would have used if I were setting this machine up. I have a few systems in Meshify C cases, used the NH-U14s on my EPYC build, and have Seasonic Focus PSU's in most of my builds. Quality components all around.

Unfortunately I do not know of a good source for inexpensive EPYC Rome processors. I would really like to put together at least one more dual socket 256 thread machine and then sell/retire my lower thread count machines, but like you said the processors are still super expensive. If I happen to find a source though I'll let you know.

[Icecold]

@pututu if you happen to need to reboot at some point(don't need to do it just for this) can you check the bios and see if it shows bifurcation as an option? On my Supermicro Xeon board it's under the Northbridge area of the settings (BIOS -> Advanced -> Chipset Configuration -> North Bridge -> IIO Configuration -> II01 Configuration)

[pututu]

@Icecold With BIOS 2.1, the bifurcation option is in the Advanced -> PCIe/PCI/PnP Configuration menu. What BIOS version you have on the 2P epyc? Currently I have no plan to add gpus to this board. Can do PCIE_x4 which is still very fast. Yeah it is a waste with so many PCIE lanes that I don't really know what to do with it

Depending on the PCIE lanes width support, you have these options:

PCIE_1.png (347.9 KiB) Viewed 54063 times

PCIE_2.png (340.88 KiB) Viewed 54063 times

[Icecold]

I appreciate the information. I should have a fairly recent bios on the 2P EPYC, but it's running an AsRock Rack ROME2D16-2T motherboard. I pulled the location for the bifurcation settings on a Supermicro motherboard from an older Haswell Xeon motherboard I have. I don't plan on running any GPU's in the 2P EPYC, but was thinking about building something similar to your build to run a bunch of GPU's from.