Thanks for the comparison. I do actually have an Epyc 7452 (32 cores, 155w TDP) on an H12SSL-i with 128GB 3200 memory (about to upgrade to 256GB) then again to max 512GB. It is running ESXi 8.0U2.
I want to have a rock solid desktop that can hibernate without crashing after a month or so and which can run a few VMs that are a part of the vsphere domain established on the server.
But, it seems to me that what you recommend is the way to go - either a 16 core 5000 TR on a desktop motherboard or a Ryzen 9 5950x or 7950x with UDIMM ECC on a decent mobo.
Epyc does have some high frequency CPU's like the 7F52 which might be suited to desktop. But power hungry.
I'm just tired of having a consumer desktop that crashes every so often because (I suspect) of errors that creap into the hibernation file.
One of the problems with running either Windows 10 in a vm or running Linux is the lack of fluid multi monitor support.
Maybe I should just Sleep instead of Hibernate.
It just sucks that Ryzen still has only 24 lanes. Threadripper 7000 HEDT should have been 60+ lanes and Ryzen 7000 should have moved 40 lanes.
I have a NUC 8i7BEH running as a HTPC, connected to a TV. Getting it to hibernate properly without crashing has been a challenge. I've had to swap out NVMe drives, USB NICs, USB keyboard dongles, turn off PCIe ASPM etc - so it can go to sleep and not wake up randomly + crash in between. Now it can hibernate with 2-3 months between reboots
Compared to this my Mac M1 laptop goes for MANY months without rebooting, wakes up with multi-monitor (although MacOS Sonoma brought back some nasty bugs with wake-from-sleep and Thunderbolt connected docks and displays). The difference is the tighter control Apple has over software + hardware
I'm just pointing out that it is possible to get Win10 Pro to do what you want, but the downside is you'll have to constrain it to very few attached devices and power profiles, as well as be ready to swap out recalcitrant devices. This makes it less useful as a desktop but one way out is to connect everything including monitors to a Thunderbolt dock and then disconnect that dock when hibernating
I should add that I had a H12SSL with a 7502 & GTX2080 running Windows 10 Enterprise and it was NOT a pleasant experience. Running ESXi and even Windows Server on that was actually far smoother, until the H12SSL crapped out due to the problematic BMC power components