I found a E2146G on Newegg. It was sold by a third party. The price was just a little more than a 8700k.
I was supposed to get the board yesterday but it’s not here. Tracking said it was delivered, sometimes they just bring our packages to to post office even though it came ups or fedex.
I am using only 16gb or ecc ram to start with so I won’t know the limitation unless I see something in the bios.
It is a bummer about the cable. That cable from Supermicro is the most expensive cable I have ever purchased. I did email JPC and they don’t sell to consumers. They said the were working with asrock on getting them out I think. But I received this in a follow up from asrock
“The Oculink cable we made is compliant to the industrial standard. So, if the cable from Supermicro is also compliant to the same industrial standard, it should work. However, in certain case, it could occur to a difference of the A9 pin, it usually uses high/low for switching between PCIe/SATA mode, and our company’s cable is designed to pull the low. Some other Oculink cable in the market could possibly be designed not to pull low. But our E3C246D2I’s PCIe/SATA mode switching mechanism is controlled by a jumper, so it shouldn’t cause affect. Hope that helps.”