Building lab computers and test-rigs for a high-end gadget

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.
Trying to figure out what turns out to be an odd corner of the market.

Working on a fairly high-end gadget (that I cannot talk about, sorry). Lots of real-time data flowing through this device. Much of the flow is handled by large FPGAs (and many smaller). My particular interest is in building test rigs, as well as the computing-heart of the device.

This boils down to PCIe lanes - tend to run out quickly. The AMD EPYC chips and motherboards - with their abundance of PCIe lanes - could make this all a lot simpler. If only I could find and buy the boards and CPUs.

To my eye, the Supermicro H12SSL boards look interesting. Likely to drop in one or more FPGA cards with x16 PCIe, maybe an x8 PCIe 4-port Ethernet card, maybe a GPU. This Supermicro board(s) have the room. (Don't need the SAS.)

The test-fixtures are going to go into the lab (with humans) so noisy pre-packaged servers are a non-starter. Plus the hardware guys are going to want the guts exposed, all the time.

For the test fixtures, we need the PCIe lanes, but not much compute. The EPYC 7252 or 7232 would fine. For the heart of the device, an EPYC 75F3 looks interesting - if we could buy the chips.

Can see that eBay, Amazon, Provantage, and Acme(?) at least seem to have the boards. EPYC CPU availability seems rather more scattered. Am I looking in the right places? Is this just an odd end of the market?

(Yeh. Not really expecting an answer, but have to ask. :/ )
 

hmw

Active Member
Apr 29, 2019
570
226
43
Call the usual suspects - Provantage/ShopBLT/CDW/Acme/TigerDirect - if you're a real company/corporation, even a small sized one - they will try to work with you and get you an EPYC CPU

As for CPUs - if this is a high end gadget, is there a problem with spending 2x the list price? If not - CDW, TigerDirect usually have EPYC CPUs but they will often be 1.5x MSRP.

If you're on a tight budget - the other option is to contact ServerSupply and check if their any of their EPYC stock is non-Dell & non-Lenovo pulls. You could probably get a 7302 (non-P) for $800-$1200

EDIT: Newegg has the 7252 in stock for a low price but I noticed it ships from UK :eek:
 
Last edited:

TXAG26

Active Member
Aug 2, 2016
397
120
43
Give wiredzone.com a call. I've purchased a ton of stuff from them over the years. Great prices and most stuff drop-ships directly from Supermicro.

Plenty of Epyc CPUs available:

 
Thanks. So pretty much on the ass-end of the market, where availability is irregular. Really hoped I was wrong. :/

(Also thanks for the ShopBLT and wiredzone.com references - not encountered before.)

Not really on a tight budget, but I personally am reluctant to waste company money. (Also have caused money to be spent to save schedule time.)