Eypc homelab 2025

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Hey smarter people than me

I feel like this is probably the safest place to ask for recommendations and not get told (that’s overkill and you don’t need that)

Looking for some hardware recommendations from someone more in the know about AMD eypc systems

It’s about to be 2025 and I have saved up and started to buy the parts for my next and hopefully last home lab server for the next few years

Building in a 45 drives hl15 for many years I’ve wanted an eypc home server way overkill and it seems prices are finally to the point where it’s reasonable

After some research I think I’m looking to find a 75F3 seems to be the highest end eypc I can be got for a reasonable price at around 1k (but if there’s a different one I should be considering please let me know)

I have no idea what motherboard I was just recommended a : supermicro h12ssl

Quick about why I’m aspiring for these parts as well as a list of what I’ve already purchased

For almost 10 years I’ve been in IT and I’ve managed 45 drives maxed out servers for video production companies well maintaining my own unrade server with a solid 10 gig network at home

Now I manage my own little IT business / video production business so I will be using my home lab for

Nas first and foremost My goal is phenomenal 10 gig transfer speeds of uncompressed ripped blu-rays and 4K raw and 6K raw video files over the network to the vdevs

As well as a few VMs for 6k and 4k video rendering leaving my editing PC free up for editing

And up to 4K transcoding for things like Plex to my whole family

As well as all the other fun things One does on their home lab

Case : 45 drives home lab hL15

PSU: (still researching)

PSU Cables: (something sleeved and nice)

HBA: Broadcom 9500-16i 12Gb SAS-3 PCIe 4.0

Hba cables: 2 SFF-8654 “8i” to 2x SFF-8643 cables

Cpu: AMD EYPC 7763 or 75f3

CPU cooler: (looking for recommendation)

Motherboard: (looking for recommendation)

Ram: (looking for recommendation would like to max it out)

HDD: Seagate Exos ST24000NM000C 24TB 7.2K RPM SATA 6Gb/s 512e 3.5in x4 to start

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IMO higher clock speeds benefit your use case more then higher core counts. You may want to investigate the new 4004 EPYC CPU family, based on AM5 before closing a deal on that older CPU you’ve listed.

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Honestly, how overkill are we talkin?

There are 60 TB NVME U.2/U.3 drives now available that can saturate a 100 gig connection with ease.

Those Seagate drives will be runnin 450 MB at most (Assuming ZRAID1), and the random iops will be ill suited for any VM hosting.

You can always slap in a few smaller NVME drives for caching and VM hosting, then use the 24 TB’s for storage.

Got a full write up about this coming soon™

Long story short: 3rd gen EPYC is pretty damn decent when it comes to efficiency, and has the PCIe lanes for serious server expansion though they are Gen 3.

Additionally, at equivalent budget the 7003 skus will result in higher performance, and more of absolutely everything.
Need 3 GPU’s for 3 dedicated pass throughs? You can do it on 7003, not on 4004.

The fact he’s still running HDD’s means, he will be running a split NVME / HDD system where more connectivity is required, where as the 4004 is the best homelab / workstation processor on the market.

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@TryTwiceMedia, have you ever encountered third-generation EPYC systems that use virtualized GPU? What I mean by virtualized GPUs is that you have one physical GPU carved up between the virtual machines and the physical machine.

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Yeah exactly I figured with the newer 4004 price wise isn’t there yet cuz it’s new not trying to drop eight grand on a CPU I can do one 1k but not 8k

The 75F3 being around $1,000 on eBay sometimes 800 sometimes 1100 I just think that that’s one of the best price to performance for this particular use case I could find I think that’ll serve well for many years to come

I’ll have l2 arc and MVMe cash pools so the hard drives aren’t really a limiting factor here they’re just for long-term storage of everything the things I accessed most often or that I’m working on immediately will most likely be in some sort of NVMe cash

Now if this was for five or six editors to work off of then yeah I would be looking into a different type of NVMe pool or U.2

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I don’t know if there is a 4004 CPU that you can get for anywhere close to the price of a 75F3 which can be had for at or under $1,000 on eBay

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The bottom of the EPYC 4004 stack starts at 150USD brand new and caps out at 800USD for the top of the line 3d v-cache processors; this handily beats 2nd hand 75F3 prices. All this while being ~25-50% faster than the 75F3 in single threaded workloads.

Edit:
If you do decide on a Milan processor, be certain the PSB fuse hasn’t been blown from whoever you buy it from (or if it has been blown that it aligns with the signing key for the BIOS of the motherboard you want).
I’m not sure how many EPYC CPUs have had their fuses blown in the wild, but I’d guess the majority of them on the market have.

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i would consider an ASRock RomeD8 variant. there are several different feature sets but it includes an intel x550 network chip instead of the broadcom. that alone would do it for me.

supermicro and asrock both have troublesome bios update procedures, and this is server gear in your house. but feature wise i think the RomeD8 stuff is worth a long look.

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Oh I didn’t see that you were talking about the ones that go in the amp soocket

Yeah I think I’ll stick with Milan those are really cool but the PCIE lanes and core counts of Milan and Milana still kick ass and still will be for a long time for this type of use case

I mean the f skews. Still have really good core clocks

Yeah I found one from a reputable eBay seller in San Diego that tests their chips and takes returns so shouldn’t have any issues with blown fuses or locked to motherboards they were very helpful and open and honest about all the processors they were selling so figures crossed

I think they were called chip flops

I thought you were talking about the SP3 Gen 4 those are not cheap yet they will be in a few years though and maybe I’ll upgrade then

But right around 4 GHz and 32 cores and all those PCIe lanes I can pretty much do anything that I’m capable of doing and not run into any hardware issues should be good for even some AI stuff with a good Nvidia RTX 4000 or something

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I am looking at AMD for VGPU. Nvidia’s pricing for VGPU is very complicated and expensive. If the total cost per VM for Nvidia’s vGPU were 200 dollars, I wouldn’t consider AMD.

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I was thinking that might have been the case, EPYC 4004 and “real” EPYC are kind of apples and oranges because of how different they are.

You’ve already got a leg up if you’ve found a good seller.

I’d second this recommendation, Intel chipsets typically have better driver features and support than broadcom which can make things easier down the line with virtualization.

I only bother with full GPU passthrough on VMs for nvidia GPUs because I don’t want to get caught up in their convoluted licensing schemes.

If all you care about is remote display, AMDs GPUs seem to deliver a better VDI experience than Nvidia’s GPUs right now. I just got a W7500 and have been impressed with it’s remote performance.

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Yeah I was between the supermicro h12ssl ct and the ASRock romed8

I ordered a super micro but I’m still curious to do some more research

I mean they’re both very capable and I think it just comes down to who has the better bios and IPMI interfaces to work with

I haven’t seen what supermicros looks like but it looks like the ASRock has like a nice GUI from a few screenshots I’ve seen

I’m in these days that’s how I pretty much choose any motherboard they’re all good as long as they have the features which one is going to be the easiest to turn the features on and off and I don’t have to read a whole textbook to figure it out

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I have, using SR-IOV on a 75F3. Supermicro server that was later upgraded.

Most OEM’s are blown, all the cheapest EPYC skus being sold by sellers with 0 feedback… All the EPYC skus being sold by sellers that mostly sell random Aliexpress junk and suddenly have 2 EPYC’s…

We’ve been burned by Vendor locked 9004’s 3 times in the past year.
1 was from a reputable vendor.

The 4004 price is pretty comparable to what you are getting, but the accompanying DDR5 ECC UDIMM and motherboard will buy a TON of DDR4 ECC

bingo
when power consumption isn’t a major factor, used high end gear is an awesome choice

solid choice

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I am in a very similar boat! I currently have a 3x minipc cluster (24C/96GB RAM total), but want to move to a single larger server, mostly for the PCIe lanes.

I went with ROMED8-2T, Epyc 7502P, and 256GB 3200 RAM for cost efficiency, and I can upgrade to 7003 series when it gets a bit cheaper in a year or two if I need to. I don’t actually need super fast CPU cores as much as I need lots of things running.

I’ll post a bit more on my own thread when I have it up and running for a while and can better comment on the platform.

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I hope @Reedith_Graham doesn’t feel I am stealing his thread. I have a few more questions to ask and It feels like a wast to start my own thread. I will start by listing my requirements.

I am considering a third generation EPYC System for a virtulation server. I will be buying the part and puting the system together my self. I plan to use Proxmox as my hyperviser. Need to virtualize any operating software i chose. My Proxmox server has to have the abiliity to run games. As a hobby I like to figer out how to run Windows only games without haveing to use Steam. I can’t justify spending more than 7500 dollars to start. I will need two EPYC CPUs so whatever motherboad I pick will have to suport two EPYC CPUs. I Will be purchasing two EPYC 64 core. Now for my questions.

My first question @TryTwiceMedia have you any experience with Gygabite EPYC motherboards. The is a motherboard I have my eye on but I don’t remember its name but it has two CPU sockets. I have heard Asrock and Supermicro BIOS’s are very hard to configure correctly and they are very tempermental. Keep in mind when answering my next question i only have experience with BIOS from comsumer motherboard’s no experience with server motherboard’s. How do BIOS’s from Gygabytes EPYC motherboard’s compare with Arock Rack and Supermicros BIOS’?

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Yeah sounds like a solid system Love that it’s upgradable but I’m sure You won’t really find any limitations

What did you do about boot drive?

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Good question yeah I’d love to hear more about how the biosis compare

To the nerdiest of nerd I’m sure they don’t even realize the bios is bad but just someone who’s a hobby nerd and dyslexic I really need a pretty Gui to help guide me

I’m curious what is your absolute need for a dual socket?

I was thinking about going dual socket but I couldn’t find a reason

1 75f3 is more than I need right now for pretty much anything I can think of and you can even game on that thing cuz it hits 4ghz

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Seriously awesome choice, rock solid stable.

yes

All non OEM server boards are the same from 2012 to 2024:
-Green or grey background with black text
-infinite settings with most undocumented outside NDA protected technical sheets or research white papers (AMD is better about releasing tuning guides)
Having specifically built several Supermicro and Gigabyte EPYC Genoa servers this year, they’re effectively the same.

My devops servers are Asrock and Supermicro. No issues out of either.

Board layout and feature set should be your only deciding factors when it comes to MoBo vendor.

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but I couldn’t find a reason
[/quote]

I have repurposed a small room in my house as my computer lab. The room only accommodates one Proxmox server, my general-use computer, and my 42u rack. I understand that if I need 64 cores for all my VMs, I need 128 cores for the server—128 cores/2=64 cores for the VMs. I plan on running all my Windows computers as virtual machines. I have figured out the case which EPYC CPU I want to go with, and I have a complete budget for the CPU coolers, but I need advice on the other components necessary for the Proxmox server. I already have two monitors (barely used) that I plan to use for my Proxmox server. My total budget for a working system is 7500 dollars US. There are a few details that I forgot to mention besides virtualizing every operating system under the sun. I also use GNS3 to simulate networks for network research. I picked the Thermaltake Core P3 because I saw a build @JayVenturi did and thought that case was cool. I have included a Link to the thread in case anyone wants to read it.

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Check out the 45 drives home lab server chassis I think it’s the nicest one ever made