32c/64t Epyc 7551P $376

[josh]

What's the catch? Fake CPU?

AMD EPYC 7551P CPU Server 32 Core 2Ghz 180W 64MB Socket SP3 Up to 3.0GHz SP3 | eBay

AMD EPYC™ 7551P. AMD EPYC™ 7001 Series. All Core Boost Speed. Max Boost Clock. # of CPU Cores. Socket Count. Up to 3.0GHz. Up to 2666MHz.

www.ebay.com

 

[Layla]

What's the catch? Fake CPU?

AMD EPYC 7551P CPU Server 32 Core 2Ghz 180W 64MB Socket SP3 Up to 3.0GHz SP3 | eBay

AMD EPYC™ 7551P. AMD EPYC™ 7001 Series. All Core Boost Speed. Max Boost Clock. # of CPU Cores. Socket Count. Up to 3.0GHz. Up to 2666MHz.

www.ebay.com

Single socket only, no dual socket. That's a good price!

 

[josh]

Single socket only, no dual socket. That's a good price!

Yea but who needs dual sockets with 32c?

 

[eduncan911]

Item location:
深圳, China

Pass. I've only had 50% success rate for Chinese CPUs. Though there really can't be fake CPUs, as they are far too complicated to replicate.

The last China CPU I got a few years ago was a totally different socket CPU - with laser etching on it of the fake model number !! Opened an eBay case and won, as they would not accept the return.

The first China CPUs I got, E5 2600 v3s engineering samples, still going. Though I've had odd lockups at random times over the last 8 years of service. Could be once every few months, or once a week.

 

[josh]

So fake CPUs?

 

[eduncan911]

So fake CPUs?

They can't really fake CPUs. It's just far too complicated.

However, they can absolutely laser etch anything they want onto a locked CPU. They prey on people who buy a "good deal", and just don't test the components soon enough to get it returned under eBay policies. (I'm very guilty of this, and been burned a few times)

If you have the patience (will take quite some time to arrive), are prepared to easily return it as, "oh well", and already have a motherboard, then yeah go for it!

For me, the motherboards still cost a kidney, and I couldn't do anything with the expensive motherboard if the CPU didn't work as there's no way I could afford an Epic these days. Now, if I already had a motherboard just sitting around, I would try for it.

 

[josh]

They can't really fake CPUs. It's just far too complicated.

However, they can absolutely laser etch anything they want onto a locked CPU. They prey on people who buy a "good deal", and just don't test the components soon enough to get it returned under eBay policies. (I'm very guilty of this, and been burned a few times)

If you have the patience (will take quite some time to arrive), are prepared to easily return it as, "oh well", and already have a motherboard, then yeah go for it!

For me, the motherboards still cost a kidney, and I couldn't do anything with the expensive motherboard if the CPU didn't work as there's no way I could afford an Epic these days. Now, if I already had a motherboard just sitting around, I would try for it.

I picked up a ROMED8-2T from Amazon warehouse on prime day for 300. Been looking for a CPU for some time.How would I test for abnormalities? I read somewhere these could be bin rejects as well

 

[eduncan911]

I picked up a ROMED8-2T from Amazon warehouse on prime day for 300. Been looking for a CPU for some time.How would I test for abnormalities? I read somewhere these could be bin rejects as well

Just be sure to test all features. All 8 channels of ram functional, it shows up as the same model number under CPU-Z/cpuinfo, is not a locked CPU (e.g. it boots and you can get to BIOS).

 

[josh]

Just be sure to test all features. All 8 channels of ram functional, it shows up as the same model number under CPU-Z/cpuinfo, is not a locked CPU (e.g. it boots and you can get to BIOS).

Is it sufficient to see the CPU model in bios/system information or can that be faked?

 

[bayleyw]

Seems reasonable, 7601's float around on eBay from US vendors for somewhere around $500 so a 7551P for $376 is not too off-target. They are not very good CPUs though, Naples's primary goal was to demonstrate that AMD could deliver an enterprise CPU with decent performance on time, in large quantities. The internal layout is odd (it is a quad-socket server on a single package) and the turbo is very bad (Zen 1 was a little slower than Skylake and 3.0GHz is really low for a modern CPU).
Its an OK placeholder if you want to keep the board (which is a very nice board!) and have something to use in the meantime until Rome CPUs start showing up again, but that's only useful if you are building a system for virtualization. Naples is a *really bad* (basically unusable) workstation CPU, it has worse single core performance than a $100 Haswell and suffers from performance pathologies due to its layout.

 

[josh]

Seems reasonable, 7601's float around on eBay from US vendors for somewhere around $500 so a 7551P for $376 is not too off-target. They are not very good CPUs though, Naples's primary goal was to demonstrate that AMD could deliver an enterprise CPU with decent performance on time, in large quantities. The internal layout is odd (it is a quad-socket server on a single package) and the turbo is very bad (Zen 1 was a little slower than Haswell and 3.0GHz is really low for a modern CPU).
Its an OK placeholder if you want to keep the board (which is a very nice board!) and have something to use in the meantime until Rome CPUs start showing up again, but that's only useful if you are building a system for virtualization. Naples is a *really bad* (basically unusable) workstation CPU, it has worse single core performance than a $100 Haswell and suffers from performance pathologies due to its layout.

Not seeing any $500 7601s. Unless you mean the Dell locked ones.
Was thinking of upgrading my dual E5-2670 proxmox host so it's even before Hardwell. Figured the core count and speed is roughly similar. PCIe pass through is a must, is it an issue?

For a deep learning system it wouldn't be a problem as well right? The 7x full x16 bandwidth looks amazing on paper.

 

[nasbdh9]

The price of 7551P on China second-hand trading platform is now no more than 2000RMB, and the price of 7401P is only 1200RMB, plus international postage, I think this is a reasonable price

 

[DanP]

I picked up a ROMED8-2T from Amazon warehouse on prime day for 300. Been looking for a CPU for some time.How would I test for abnormalities? I read somewhere these could be bin rejects as well

Watch out on that board, once updated to newest firmware they don't play nice with naples / 7001 cpus.

 

[FlorianZ]

Zen 1 was a little slower than Haswell and 3.0GHz is really low for a modern CPU.

For my virtualized workstation I went from a E5-2697 v3 Haswell to a EPYC 7371 Naples and that was a huge upgrade. The AMD chip is also faster than the E5-2699 v4 Broadwell I have in another machine. Did you mean to say Naples was a little slower than Skylake-SP? Zen also introduced a significant IPC uplift over Broadwell, so that 3.0 GHz chip is probably more of a 3.4+ GHz in Intel currency.

But yeah, the CCX NUMA layout on Naples was a mess, and as you said Rome is still a pretty big upgrade over Naples.

 

[bayleyw]

For my virtualized workstation I went from a E5-2697 v3 Haswell to a EPYC 7371 Naples and that was a huge upgrade. The AMD chip is also faster than the E5-2699 v4 Broadwell I have in another machine. Did you mean to say Naples was a little slower than Skylake-SP? Zen also introduced a significant IPC uplift over Broadwell, so that 3.0 GHz chip is probably more of a 3.4+ GHz in Intel currency.

But yeah, the CCX NUMA layout on Naples was a mess, and as you said Rome is still a pretty big upgrade over Naples.

oops, yeah I meant Skylake. The 7371 is arguably better than one of the 32c parts, it was a special frequency-optimized part, though the CCX layout is huge mess (4 cores per die).
I think in Haswell terms the frequencies are about even, Zen1 was a little slower than Skylake which was a little faster than Haswell.

Not seeing any $500 7601s. Unless you mean the Dell locked ones.
Was thinking of upgrading my dual E5-2670 proxmox host so it's even before Hardwell. Figured the core count and speed is roughly similar. PCIe pass through is a must, is it an issue?

For a deep learning system it wouldn't be a problem as well right? The 7x full x16 bandwidth looks amazing on paper.

For ML and Proxmox it will be fine, just mind the layout (different GPUs will wind up attached to different dies) and don't expect VMs the size of the host to perform well on everything. @FlorianZ has a decent suggestion, you might try finding a 7371 which is a frequency-optimized SKU that will give you full platform features.

 

[josh]

The price of 7551P on China second-hand trading platform is now no more than 2000RMB, and the price of 7401P is only 1200RMB, plus international postage, I think this is a reasonable price

That's about a 50USD premium still though. Are these platforms accessible to international users?

 

[josh]

oops, yeah I meant Skylake. The 7371 is arguably better than one of the 32c parts, it was a special frequency-optimized part, though the CCX layout is huge mess (4 cores per die).
I think in Haswell terms the frequencies are about even, Zen1 was a little slower than Skylake which was a little faster than Haswell.



For ML and Proxmox it will be fine, just mind the layout (different GPUs will wind up attached to different dies) and don't expect VMs the size of the host to perform well on everything. @FlorianZ has a decent suggestion, you might try finding a 7371 which is a frequency-optimized SKU that will give you full platform features.

7371 is a little out of budget unfortunately. Almost triple the price of the 7551p over here.

 

[azsrz]

That's about a 50USD premium still though. Are these platforms accessible to international users?

Yes but you don't have 30-60 days return and PayPal protection. Sometimes the seller doesn't do international shipping and you will need to find a mail forwarder.

 

[josh]

Yes but you don't have 30-60 days return and PayPal protection. Sometimes the seller doesn't do international shipping and you will need to find a mail forwarder.

I guess eBay makes the most sense

 

[Cruzader]

Aliexpress 330$ id guess same source since same exact pics including the non-stock one.