Initially the WIO was fantastic, as I was able to fit a full sized GPU in there. Initially this chassis had 2 x E5-2680 V2’s which used even more power
Then, I got some free E5-2680 V4’s and 256GB of DDR4, so I went and bought a new board. I found one without the right hand riser slot, only the left. I figured it would be fine, as I’d never need more than 4 full size PCIE slots
At first I put just one CPU in there, threw in my 10G NIC and my PCIE SSD and I was great. Then I tried to add an HBA so I could use my tape library and I realized I had to have the second CPU in to use the top two PCIE slots. DAMN!
Since then I’ve added an HBA for a virtual TrueNAS setup, and backed myself into a situation where I have to have 2 CPU’s to use those slots!
Good thing we got EPYC now on the table with (basically unlimited) IO. I’m not familar with that architecture, but if this is mainly for storage and IO, smaller and more efficient SKUs might do the trick (also should be beneficial to fan power/heat). Not sure whats on sale there, but 28 good old power hungry Xeon cores take their toll.
AMD isn’t advocating for performance/watt for no reason. But those E5-2680 are good stuff otherwise. And the system specs isn’t something I’d trash and replace with lots of additional money.