Portable Network in a Box build running Threadripper 1950x

So ever since i kept seeing the adverts for the antsle ‘cloud in a box’ and the price tag to go with it. I wondered if it would be possible to build something better with a budget of of around $2000. Here is what i came up with:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: AMD - Threadripper 1950X 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor ($579.99 @ Newegg Business)
CPU Cooler: Noctua - NH-U9 TR4-SP3 46.44 CFM CPU Cooler ($69.90 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock - X399M Taichi Micro ATX TR4 Motherboard ($274.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill - Aegis 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory ($160.98 @ Newegg)
Storage: HP - EX920 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($159.99 @ Newegg)
Video Card: EVGA - GeForce GT 710 2 GB Video Card ($46.14 @ OutletPC)
Power Supply: Silverstone - 600 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply ($130.65 @ Amazon)
Total: $1422.63
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-02-23 00:45 EST-0500

And shove it in this case:

http://sliger.com/products/cases/cerberus/

Am i nuts, or would this actually work?

Small amount of ram looks fishy, but I have to ask…

Why?

You want foure ram sticks for that quad memory support.

Yeah, forgot to double that.

What would you actually be using 16 cores for? I would go with a 6 or 8 core CPU and more storage.

20 IT Students running code on it. The board has 2 more m.2 slots and 6 sata ports if the VMs require space. This is only its first form.

Ahh. Well, good answer!

How would you secure it? If my concerns with security are met, I might run their software in a virtual home lab that I plan on building in a few months.

You run everything in VMs, snapshot the VMs, revert to the snapshot.

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If I understand your above statement, security is handled by taking snapshots of your virtual machines and when a bad actor finally gets hold of your virtualized network, you fix it by reverting your virtual machines to the snapshots taken earlier.

Not necessarily when you detect a bad actor, you just revert to the snapshots every morning regardless, so the VMs are transient. Your students store their work and documents on a NFS mount or USB key or whatever.

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You can save about $10 on the GPU by using this one instead: https://pcpartpicker.com/product/7mckcf/evga-video-card-01gp31302lr

It has a greater variety of ports, but I think it’s based on tech that’s a couple generations older than the one you’ve got listed. Dunno if that’ll be a problem.

It was in there just for wattage reading, the only goal of that card is local management.