EPYC 7532 Box — Running Proxmox, NAS, Local-First, Learning While Adulting

High-Performance Computing Workstations & Servers
1

TL;DR

Kentucky-based EKU Honors alum, curious idiot trying to learn the way without burning money, time, or sanity. I have an EPYC 7532 and want to build a cheap, boring, low-headache Proxmox + ZFS box to replace Google/iCloud, run Jellyfin, host local services, experiment with containers/networking, and do **local-first cryptographic/DeFi **. Idle XMR mining only when nothing else is happening. Stability >cheap > loud > performance. Looking for guidance on cheap SP3 boards, minimum sane RAM, storage layout, and “don’t do this” warnings. Will trade for DIY Solar knowledge.

Hey all — first things first, I do not know what I’m doing in this space but, curiosity and the desire to run my stuff at home, ditch the cloud and my icloud and google storage bills for a couple good friends and my kids, host some media, and learn some stuff along the way.

Most, if not all of this is genuinely over my head. I’m a curious tech nerd who likes tinkering, understands just enough to get into trouble, and is trying to learn without spending all of my free time participating in 20 side quests just to get this running.

So looking for straight to the point, talk to me like I’m an idiot and tell me

  • “That’s dumb”
  • “That’ll bite you later”
  • “Slow down and do this first”

Looking to build a Proxmox backbone that will house NAS, private cloud storage, some media server ability although not sure how much at this point. HomeAssistant with solar assistant, also some XMR mining when things are idle, defi projects, some local AI and whatever rabbit holes I fall into on the way.

What I Have for the Build

  • CPU: AMD EPYC 7532 (32c/64t, Rome)

That’s it so far.

Where I Need Help (I’m Dumb and buy the CPU First)

  • Cheap SP3 motherboards that don’t suck -realize they are not inexpensive overall
  • Realistic minimum RAM (64 vs 128 GB) -know it has to be ECC
  • Gotchas running Proxmox + ZFS + Jellyfin + mining together
  • Things that seem smart early but become nightmares later

I’m trying to build something boring, cheap, and while I learn — because I also need time and mental energy to:

  • Find a new job
  • Be a dad
  • Live a little
  • Go to music festivals
  • Not hate my life

If the advice is “simplify this” or “don’t do that yet,” I’m listening.

Thanks for reading, and appreciate any guidance, reality checks, or “don’t do what I did” stories.

2

I have a build similar to this and highly recommend the ASrock boards now for homelab especially.

Check out the vendors webpage: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=ROMED8-2T#Specifications

Make sure to validate your CPU is on the qualified list (it is.)

The manual is very helpful in understanding whats on the board and how it is hooked together. Chips with 8+ memory channels and 128+ lanes of pcie are somewhat more complex than your average desktop build. The block diagrams are your friend for understanding any caveats ahead of time.

Your use case sounds like its right up the alley of STH. Check out their review of it: ASRock Rack ROMED8-2T Review an ATX AMD EPYC Platform

Then for NEW hardware vendors I usually go with PROVANTAGE: ASRock Inc ROMED8-2T Asrock MB ROMED8-2T AMD EPYC7002 7001 Socket SP3 LGA4094 PCIE ATX Provantage and Tech-America are reputable and often have the lowest price for a new board like this. Buying a new board vs ebay is usually the right trade off for time spent dicking with it to get it to work vs knowing its new and likely not the problem.

Speaking of which, hopefully you know your CPU is not vendor locked to dell or lenovo (most sellers will tell you this, because it will never boot in a board from another vendor because those guys are dicks and want to kill the used hardware resale market so do stuff like that in the name of “security”)

For RAM, get any 8 sticks of fully buffered ECC RDIMM you want. The JDEC stan JEDEC memory standards are excellent for most ecc rdimms and you can actually mix sticks from different vendors without issue in different channels. Most server sticks run at the spec, and the spec is the spec. Just dont mix different types of ram (like LRDIMM with normal DIMM, or weird ranking 1rx8 with 2rx4…) again see the vendors QVL for memory SKUs for the fully vetted parts to pick from if those terms are all greek.

I am running 8 of these: Pardon Our Interruption... but thats because I got them cheap cheap cheap. I spotted another SKU around the hundred dollar price point Pardon Our Interruption...

Also these server chips with tons of memory lanes really dont run great (due to cpu die chiplet interconnect topology) when not fully populated with sticks, so whatever your budget and appetite for used hardware you will be better served by filling up every channel with one dimm.

NVME is king for storage right now, drop an M.2 stick (or two) in the board and load proxmox 9 you will be off to the races with tons of pcie slots to add whatever stuff your heart desires.

I dropped an RTX 4000 ADA card in mine to pass-through to a VM doing all sorts of GPU AI stuff for example. Another fun adventure some weekend.

Also your parts list forgot a heat sink, the arctic air cooler fits in a 4u case like those cheap rosewill boxes and works great. Make sure to pick up the correct torx tool for tightening the Epyc CPU to the board (heatsink+cpu+board) mounting pressure is probably the #1 problem I have seen people run into when assembling unfamiliar hardware like this for the first time. It is different than a tiny desktop chip that just clips in with a retention bar and done.

3

Im putting together an Epyc box for AI research.

  • Eypc 7532
  • HUANANZHI H12D 8D (older supermicro and GB boards are available) - But this is probably the cheapest new Epyc board you can get.
  • 512Gb DDR4 ram (bought just before mega price rises)- Honestly for what you are doing you can probably get away using 8Gb or 16Gb DDR4 rdimms.
  • 1300w PSU
  • Corsair 9000D case
    Its a complicated build, mostly because I want to put a lot of (9) GPU’s into it.

Epyc stuff is all expensive (even second hand older stuff), uses huge power, makes huge noise, massive in size. None of your needs to me tell me you need an Eypc 7532 CPU or associated server board/costs.

Personally for what you want I recommend you get a NAS with ECC. It will be small, low power, quiet and run VM, ZFS, Jellyfin just fine. If not that, I would recommend a small AM4 system with ECC ram for ZFS.