I should also mention if I buy this it would not be for the homelab but I do have a business case for a machine like that.
Correct
so the full compatibility is:
Scalable Gen 1 - Micron NVDIMM @2933 mhz
Scalable Gen 2 - Intel Optane 100 series PMEM @ 2666 mhz
Scalable Gen 3 - Intel Optane 200 series PMEM @ 3200 mhz
Scalable Gen 4 - Intel Optane 300 series PMEM @ 4400 mhz
And of note, pmem will downclock all DIMMs on the socket to the max the pmem can handle. DDR4-2933 becomes DDR4-2666 on a second gen scalable with Intel Optane 100 PMEM for example.
The overall usability however may outweigh the loss in speed as 6GB/s storage per DIMM right next to the CPU is wildly convenient for virtual machines.
Used as additional RAM, Optane needs to be ran in cached mode, but can speed up a traditional DRAM system but realistically, performance parity can be expected with substantially increased total system memory.
Of note: Micron NVDIMMs are notably faster and smaller than their Intel counterparts.
Milan-X, I was genuinely shocked how much more efficient AMD is than Intel per generation.
Milan-X is twice as fast as Intel’s Sapphire Rapids, similar efficiency, but half the cost and a year older. It’s a no brainer.
My first EPYC build was a 9334 Turin as that best fit the use case for the client’s environment. The overall efficiency of that build made me wonder when AMD started dominating, not just the top performance metrics, but the efficiency side as well.
Which led to this rabbit hole we are in now.
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Slightly off topic, but how exactly do you set PMEM to cache mode? I know Optane is recommended a lot for a SLOG but I’m wondering how well PMEM would work to enable a larger ARC.
In the UEFI you configure optane to be managed by the OS.
It’s then presented to the host OS as a physical disk which can then be assigned as anything.
Note: If you address the entire capacity as a single disk you will be effectively running in RAID0
Do you have the data available as a spreadsheet / sqlite?
I just bought some used (non server) hardware for my first ““real”” homeserver and I stumbled across your list… so I thought I’d look into some of these things, just seeing if I could have done better…
Xeon E-2278G on ebay (European, nothing for GEL) is ~ 150 bucks for ES chips, while “real” cpus are about 500-750. (bundles/systems with them can be had for 600+)
I mean, a TDP of 35 (or is it 80 ?) Watts and doing any actual work for a chip this old is impressive, but damn. Those are a lot of kWh worth of… worth.
I looked at the wiki and thought the E-2136 looked nice and cheap. On Ebay they were at 130-160 mostly (one from the UK was an exception for 70, but importing into the EEA/EFTA is a bitch)… Only Motherboard I could find was $700+$100 for shipping from the US.
TLDR: Either I’m incredibly bad ad finding good deals, I misunderstood you or things are different now/here.
What I got instead
r7 1700
32GB ram
If it ends up being too slow I should be able to upgrade up to zen3 easily. Not ECC, but as a common pedestrian, I never missed it.
Happy to not be unhappy about this after reading your list 
.
I always loved the idea of persistent memory. The idea of “in a couple of years” just chucking 2 used 128GB pmem modules into a random consumer motherboard will of course always stay in dreamland, buuut…
You got me to look at the Scalable 2 processors (Cascade Lake) and first I thought they were all 200+ bucks, but that was only for the platinum ones. Motherboards though start at 300+ bucks.
I actually found a system that I’m now bidding on. NO chance I should be able to win this auction if anyone who actually knows what that thing is worth finds it, but maybe I’m lucky 
(the one HDD in there alone is prob. worth about my max bid^^ Edit: yep, been outbidden)
After seeing Wendell talk (with GN) about cxl and PCIe Ram I was wondering about putting pmem into a cxl module. I mean, probably doesn’t make sense, but I thought it was funny. It could be a “HAH! Optane Memory DOES work on AMD” (if it does) XD
If you made it this far… Sorry for my rambling, and I hope you have a great week! 
- J
I was looking at these a few months ago and the cheapest way to get a motherboard is getting an old OEM (dell, hp, Lenovo, probably others) low end desktop workstation barebones and taking the motherboard and whatever is proprietary. The old Supermicro motherboards can be found cheap from china too I believe X11SCA-F although idk how tariffs are going if you’re in the US
Oh, yeah. I just looked up that specific mobo and it’s about 150 € on Ebay.
(And I’m from Europe, so no reason to worry about the “”“reciprocal”“” tarifs and stuff.)
With used whole systems it can be extremely varying, just by supply. But you’re right, there are good deals
Phoronix released a review for the 16 core 65W TDP Epyc 4545P. It looks great from an efficiency standpoint.
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