Hey all, I’m looking at a WRX90 Threadripper upgrade for my local AI server. I’ve come into enough money to cover the the cost of the mobo, cpu, riser cables and everything else I’ll need to go open air. Of course I’ll need RAM, and it doesn’t look like my 128GB of non-ECC is going to cut it. I’m wondering if a ‘cheap’ stick of 16GB RDIMM will hold me over until I raise the funds for the good stuff. I know there are RAM compatibility tables for the ASUS and ASRock WRX90 boards, but what are the odds that an off-brand stick will work without trouble? I’m fine with slower speed, no over clocking, etc. I’d just like to have it work in the short term while I wait for the good stuff.
Thanks in advance!
yeah i’m down a similar path and been tossing up growing my fleet of 2xr9700 ai pro’s to 4. The problem is that even with 4, and a ~2kw system i only end up with 128gb of vram.
Local models are great up to a point - it seems after Alibaba got rid of their community team, we might not see any future 25B/35B/122B/etc models, and the 1-2T+ models is the new norm. At around $10K usd per 256GB DDR5-RDIMM kit at the moment, what us enthusiasts could do up until beyond NYE 2025, it now makes no sense for us to pour our hard earned money into local model hosting.
$10K buys almost 6 years of the top Claude plan (Max 20X). It’s sad - but the DDR wars has messed our whole playground 
For what it’s worth to anyone, I got an A-Tech 16GB RDIMM to get me off the ground. Works great, no issues. You know, other than the price tag. (Cries in hundred dollar bills.)
Gregnetau, I hear ya. I only did this because I got very lucky coming into some ‘free’ money. I got everything up and running this weekend with my 3 3090’s in an open air rig. Now I have lots of 16x PCIe lanes and 8 channels of RDIMM support. I feel like I’m set for the future. I may try for a 4th 3090, at this point it’s cheaper than the RAM, ha!
Most of the fun for me comes from building it all out and learning. I figure if my friend can justify $4K for a yearly golf membership, I can justify that for for my fun and learning. (Given enough time I can justify just about anything. Ha!)
Here’s to hoping open weight keeps going strong!
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