X99 is still, and will be for some time, one of the best platforms for Tech Enthusiast and Home Servers

What are you talking about? The Ryzen 3600 is perfect for light loads like gaming.
My laptop has a comparable processor to that and I play CPU-heavy titles like Civ5 and Stellaris/CK3/HoI4 on it all the time. It does fine.

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1st gen is cheap ryzen and it’s do able just like x99 but a bit rough

I have a 5820k, 32gb running as my unraid system. It’s been a workhorse since new but I worry a tad with power consumption with the older gear with power prices sky rocketing here

Still running x99 in both my home servers, but I did recently move away from it for my workstation
My unraid box has a E5-2697 v4, my forbidden router has an i7 5960x that I bought about a month after x99 launched.
My desktop was running an i7 6950x until I jumped to the Ryzen 7950x.
I bought an Asrock x99 extreme 4 with that 5960x and when x99 was going out I bought the last 3 of those same boards at my local Microcenter.

I have been looking around for a good (lower power draw) replacement for the platform, but all my hangups are over the amount of PCIe lanes on AM4 or AM5.
Am I asking too much to be able to put a GPU, 10gb NIC, HBA, and 8x m.2 SSDs on a 16x carrier on a non-server platform?

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Now that LGA2066 workstations are getting decommissioned, I don’t think it makes sense as much sense anymore to buy X99/C612 for gaming or workstation purposes. I will agree that X99 is basically the last true HEDT platform, but if the camp of “tech enthusiast” is broken down into two, the homelabbers are either still on Broadwell or using something consumer; the gamers are on {5/7}950X or 1{0,1,2,3}900K.

As for where your money is going towards when you buy an X570 motherboard… I think we all know.
FOR THOSE WHO DARE FOR THOSE WHO DARE FOR THOSE WHO DARE THEY TOLD YOU

If that is your main concern, try to look into a motherboard with as many m.2 slots as possible.

Need more SATA contacts or a SATA RAID? There are m.2 expansion port cards and u.2 → m.2.
Need a 10GB NIC? Yes, those exist as m.2
Need a Thunderbolt port? Well, actually, haven’t found an m.2 yet for that, so you want that on your motherboard. Have no fear, it will appear. At some point.

So, it would not surprise me if some AM6 motherboards in consumer space only has a single PCIe x16, perhaps one or two PCIe x1, and then 8+ m.2 in the consumer space. For anything that can be powered by m.2 it more than makes sense, after all, and with that many m.2 devices you might as well put extra fan controllers and SATA connectors on m.2 expansion cards. Why have a ton of headers you aren’t going to be using in any case?

HEDT (e.g. Threadripper / EPYC / Xeon) will still have tonnes of PCIe slots for years to come though. After all, mining farms will still want their 8x16 (=128) PCIe lanes watercooled 4090 farm devices. Because miners gonna mine. But they will get more and more expensive and for home use… Those machines almost never make sense in either case.

Not saying I’m happy about it, but that’s where I think the market is heading. Consumer → m.2 and HEDT → PCIe, for better or worse. :person_shrugging:

Couple years ago I bought a X99 Taichi on clear out for cheap. I just filled it up with 128GB and let it sit in a box. Two days ago I bought a 2680 v4 for 50,- bucks. Probably gonna be used for three things:

  • ZFS backup of all my machines and possibly backblaze cloud sync
  • Run a Windows VM for the two times per year I might need it
  • Stable diffusion server (probably gonna switch my 3060 to 3090 for that)

For RAM intensive stuff it is a great platform for the money. Boards will be the problem at some point.

it is probably worth 3x what you paid for it now on ebay. that is one of the best x99 boards and will make a fine home server though.

I don’t know what it is worth now. I got it for 160,- Euro, I think.

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