I Built a 64-Core AMD EPYC “Monster” Server

Ever wanted a server that can chew through anything you throw at it? In this video, I’m unboxing and setting up a dual-socket SuperMicro H11DSI motherboard equipped with two AMD EPYC 7542 CPUs-giving me an insane 64 cores and 128 threads of sheer power! I’ll walk you through installing Proxmox, creating multiple virtual machines (Windows 10, Windows 11, Ubuntu), setting up GPU passthrough, and pushing this “monster” to its limits.
Is it overkill? Maybe. But I’ll also show you how to build a more budget-friendly AMD EPYC setup if you’re not ready to drop $$$ for a 64-core beast. Whether you’re a virtualization fanatic, a homelab enthusiast, or just someone who wants a ridiculously powerful system, this one’s for you.
SP3 CPU List (Make sure you are buying one that's 7001 or 7002, 7003 series are not compatible with the motherboard I'm showcasing in this video)
www.cpu-monkey...
The links below are not affiliated, simply these are the sellers on eBay that I bought the items from
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The CPU
Used
www.ebay.com/i...
Brand new
www.orangehard...
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The motherboard
Used
www.ebay.com/i...
Brand new
www.newegg.com...
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Cooler
www.amazon.com...
Alternative cheaper CPU
www.ebay.com/i...
The torque screwdriver that I used in the viodeo
www.amazon.com...
VGA to HDMI adapter
www.walmart.co...
#amd #epyc #epycserver #dualsocket #supermicro #h11dsi #threadripper #x79 #x99 #e5 #xeon #budgetbuild #pcbuild #gaming #workstation #pcgaming #pcmasterrace #amdvsintel #tech #technology #computers #server #homelab #serverbuild #diy #pc #proxmox #virtualization #gpu #benchmark

[@HyenaEmpyema]

To those who have never built a super micro motherboard machine before, it can take 1-3 minutes for it to post. I spent a weekend pulling my hair out thinking there was a problem with the video card, no you just have to wait.

[@deamit6225]

512GB memory to train also takes time with AMD CPUs

[@ChaBawbe]

I think it's the first time I see someone make a server with used Epyc cpus. STH would have them new but never showcased builds or the performance. Thank your for this video.

[@frankwong9486]

AMD zen generation improvements are big enough to skip some old epyc 7950x doing quite well compared to older epyc except memory channel / pcie lanes count I looked at some zen2/zen3 epyc but after looking at what I needed/ daily task I go 7950x instead at the end

[@nadtz]

@@frankwong9486 Most people who are buying Epyc do so exactly for the PCIE lanes and memory, especially if you want to add more than say 3-4 NVME drives. Single 32-64 core Naples or Rome with 128+gb memory isn't going to be as fast as AM4/5 but it's pretty dense and the lower TDP CPU's aren't terrible if your power isn't expensive (which I understand is a concern for a lot of people).

[@nadtz]

Admittedly there aren't as many videos as there are for old Xeons but they are out there.

[@hackdesigner]

Wow, what a powerhouse for a reasonable price. One such monster can totally run a business.

[@seansingh4421]

This is a lot more than sufficient for a small business.

[@djstraussp]

Nice Build, those Epycs run perfectly. I have the same MB and Ram but with a pair of 7551 that I plan to upgrade soon.

[@dieseldes6578]

I built an AMD Epyc 7K62 (48 core) server with a used CPU and Supermicro motherboard, H11SSL I . It wasn't "budget", but was relatively cheap vs the price of new hardware. Cost was about £500, motherboard and CPU. This thing idles at 75-80w, and when running unraid, with 3 VMs including blue iris running 13 cameras, PF sense as a VM, code project on a GPU, and another GPU passed though to a VM, with 6 hard drives and 2 NVME's, 10Gb SFP+ card etc, it uses 120-140 watts, at less than 15% CPU usage. I am very happy with that. My backup server has a intel E5 2698 V4 20 core cpu and its about 1/4 the CPU power of the EPYC, but idles at the same power usage.... I would love a gen 3 Epyc and H12 supermicro board, but didn't want to spend the extra money. I would have had to pay twice as much, which just doesn't make sense to me in my home use case. Thanks, Des

[@dieseldes6578]

Just to add, i specifically wanted a single socket motherboard, as the second socket adds size and power, that i don't need. You can do 64 cores on one CPU with these, so one is enough for me. My setup gets 13x the score in cinebench to a E5 2687w V2!

[@silverstone7778]

That's actually quite good. But those Prices I don't see anywhere. Unless you want to get the Motherboard and CPU from China ...

[@dieseldes6578]

​@@silverstone7778I bought the CPU and motherboard separately on eBay from china sellers. I had no issues...

[@yuryeuceda8590]

near 4 year ago I build ne Huananzhi x99 F8D with 2 Xeon E5 2678 v3 with 64 GBs of RAM and it works great with VMs in VirtualBox, HyperV en Kubernetes and Docker

[@AnonyDave]

There's one additional aspect to the x99-era stuff being so prolific. Those were the ones being decommissioned and available cheap during the silicon shortage. Being able to get decent compute at a decent price during that time made them very cost effective. Since the shortage is less of a thing now, the cost to tool up for newer generations just hasn't had such a need so it just hasn't (and probably won't, at least not to the level we saw) happened

[@mikegrok]

I have the an epyc 9124. A 16 core part. Benchmarks I have run put the CPU speed as the equivalent of the 64 core 7xx3 part. The Turin 9xx5 cores are 40% faster than the Genoa cores. So unless you have a very low cpu usage workload, it something in the SP5 socket is a better solution.

[@levygaming3133]

Aren’t those only a generation appart? How is that possible? Is that one of the high frequency / V-Cache parts?

[@Ray88G]

Thank you for showing us your builds

[@ollimacp]

please test some more models like llama 3. 70b 90b and 405B model and/or maybe the quen qwq and deepseek coder. would be really interesting if one can replace this and do not need a gpu for specific LLMs

[@ksitau]

I'm curious too how it will perform with these models

[@jayjackson4685]

Nice work, I have my Epyc 9654 I'm running currently. I have to say it is a monster CPU. Running 2 - 10 gb LAG connection to the net with fiber.

[@ferdinandbardamu3945]

For the price of this you can get three Minisforum 16 core Zen5 itx boards and run a current get 3 node cluster.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

I reviewed Minisforum mini-ITX board as well kzbin.info/www/bejne/q2nFeWavgtmhec0 5x minisforum would match this particular CPU.

[@איציקצבי-ר7ב]

an affordable epyc home server would be nice.

[@colestowing8695]

im not a tech guy...i barely have a clue what i just watched. But big numbers good 😁👍

[@TheLaurentDupuis]

You should consider the Supermicro H11DSi-NT instead of this. It's the same board but it have 4x10G and 2 connectors for NVMe disk.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

You are correct, although its a bit more expensive than what I'm using here, but you are right.

[@SB-qm5wg]

Turning off all the pxe & network boot settings in the BIOS will speed up the start up.

[@ewenchan1239]

AWESOME build!!!

[@pauljacob750]

I think the 7532 would have been better due to the larger cache...

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

It's a bit weird for the motherboard to use PCIe 3.0 when all 128 PCIe lanes from the EPYC are 4.0.

[@industrial-wave]

Its a board that was originally made for the 7xx1 series of epyc CPUs, which were gen 3. They still allow usage of 7xx2, but you don't get the benefit of gen 4 as a tradeoff.

[@timramich]

It's an H11 board which happened to have forward CPU support. The H12 boards support Gen 4.

[@Ozz465]

Will never own any of these but man that looks like so much fun . Great Vid

[@infango]

You forget one thing with EPYC CPU from AMD it can be OEM locked to motherboard so it will not work in any other motherboard and it cant be reversed, it can by risky..

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Yes, but most/many sellers on eBay are selling "unlocked" version of it, like the one I bought

[@StaK_1980]

Now I can run an ARK server on this bad boy. 🙂 One question: what bandwidth do you need for a local login into the VM? Like if missus wants to game on 1080p/60fps, would a non-5G WLAN suffice or should I run a gigabit cable to her? (she loves to use laptops, but those don't have the horsepower to game - but are quiet)

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

non-5G WLAN, doubt it. I would use a gigabit ethernet for best performance.

[@StaK_1980]

@@TechnicallyUnsure Thank you! I'll have to tunnel through walls but it wili be done. :-)

[@VincentAndre_HK]

to quiet that down, look into the Freezer 4U-M, you will be surprised.

[@RoyHess666]

You forgot to show if it can run #crysis! In a VM! 😀😀

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Dang it, I knew I forgot something!

[@muhdiversity7409]

What memory DIMMS? In a server motherboard that is something very important to share.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

The Supermicro H11DSi motherboard uses DDR4 registered ECC DIMMs. I show it during the Ubuntu part of the video

[@syamsulartist]

lets say i want to buy only 1 cpu first and add another one later when i have a budget. will this motherboard boot up with only 1 cpu installed?

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Love the question, yes! You can run it with a single CPU

[@danthompsett2894]

The NT model comes with Dual 10GB Nics rather than 1GB, dont be fooled by ultra cheap cpu's like i was they are quite often Vendor locked in my case vendor locked to Dell just fyi, also dont buy the cpu's with P in the name they are Single Socket CPU's only again just fyi, i went with Dual 7302, 16C32T 3Ghz Base 3.3Ghz Boost 155watts per CPU with 120GB of DDR4@3200Mhz one stick out of 16 not seen but thats ok im living with it, it kicks ass in Cinebench R23 and is a great Hard Drive Server. Roughly 60'C underload using Aliexpress 92mm 6 Heatpipe Tower Coolers.

[@ranjitmandal1612]

Crazy power 🔥

[@Llyonard]

Not related question, what clock is that?

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

That's just a nixie tube clock I bought a year or so ago

[@dorinxtg]

What screwdriver do you use?

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

I added the link to video description

[@Hadisabetghadam]

7:37 Sas Connectors Also Has SDCard Slot

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

As far as I know, that's for BMC/IPMI, like you can't use it in Windows/Linux etc

[@Hadisabetghadam]

@@TechnicallyUnsure You Should Read The Manual :) (CPU Sata0-3 On Silk Screen)

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

I meant they are SATA 3.0 Ports

[@dorinxtg]

How's the noise from those CPU coolers? I thought about buying them but I heard that as soon as you get some load on the CPU's, those cooler fan runs like a jet engine...

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Yeah, usually server fans are like that. So yes, it gets very loud, I don't recommend sitting next to it for a long time. So either you need to find some alternative cooling (water cooling or some quiet cooler) or you need to place the server in a rack, which is what I do

[@PuOop-j9l]

the problem is that if you don't need specialized server hardware or a ton of ram, A zen 5 minipc is gonna cost you less, perform at 80% of the speed and consume a tenth

[@deguinh4]

It is impractical for Brazilians, these prices for these kits are absurd!

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Whenever I feature very affordable X99 boards, some people complain they're cheap and useless. But if I showcase something a bit more expensive, others argue it's overpriced. The truth is, not every board will suit everyone. It really depends on individual budgets, specific use cases, availability, and personal preferences.

[@webmonkey44]

to be fair if your running linux/bsd, x99 is perfectly viable. its only windows where it becomes a problem.

[@mariushmedias]

The power consumption is not surprising, you're using 16 sticks of ram ... that's around 2-3 watts per stick ... so you have around 40 watts in just the ram sticks.

[@Dvalin21]

There are Xeon Scalable Cpu 1 and 2 gen LGA3647 that is much cheaper both motherboard and CPU. Aliexpress sale basically clone of what SuperMicro boards and then tons of used SuperMicro boards on ebay. Just purchased one. Expensive, but still wont pay even close to what you paid (which Im saying just for comparison) as in this video. MB are from 235 to 400, cpu are depend on where you get them can range from 6 dollars to 80 bucks. The 2 gen being the most expensive.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

As I said in this video, next video I'll be covering Intel Xeon. Stay tuned. I actually already recorded the video, just need to finalize editing

[@AllaunSilverfox]

Could you mention what the tool model is?

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Sorry, just added the link to the video description.

[@denizsevinc9334]

thank you , great video !

[@Sigmatechnica]

I was going to do somthing like this, went with cascade lake xeon in nthe end due to their lower idle power

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Stay tuned, Intel Xeon based build will be published on my channel soon (editing it as we speak)

[@mainegrower]

how much was the ram. do you have a link to it.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

www.aeonmicroinc.com/m393a4k40bb1-crc-samsung-32gb-ddr4-2400-ecc-registered-2rx4-cl17-pc4-19200-288-pin-rdimm/

[@mainegrower]

@@TechnicallyUnsure thank you for the super fast reply.

[@syedamer130]

I really like your video, how did you achieve the PCIe passthrough? I really struggled with it and then abandoned Proxmox. My setup: ryzen 7900x with 128gb ram and rtx 3080

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Honestly, I just followed the Proxmox guide page for passthrough step by step. Did you enable SR-IOV?

[@posi_de]

The motherboard is the key

[@syedamer130]

@@TechnicallyUnsure I did enable SR -IOV I've followed the same guide but it didn't work for me. My friend followed it and it worked for his AMD 7800xt.

[@syedamer130]

@@posi_de it worked on x670e for my friend with AMD GPU

[@AndrewParent-y9y]

do you think this would be powerful enough to play pong? /s

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

with or without ray tracing?

[@AndrewParent-y9y]

@@TechnicallyUnsure Without let's not get too crazy.

[@voonoo2059]

it looks like this mainboard has only PCIe 3.0 like the x99 boards. So it slows down modern GPUs

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

And that's weird because the EPYC has 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes.

[@nadtz]

@@BrunodeSouzaLino Rome has PCIE4, H11 boards were Naples native and Rome support was added later, tradeoff is PCIE gen3. If you want gen4 get a H12 board (or 7002/3 board from another manufacturer) which supports Rome and Milan.

[@stormk-1130]

Quick question guys i know this computer work well with server, deep learning, machine learning, etc? You think it work well with 3d, sculpting, game developing, unreal engine?

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Absolutely! Why not? You can just connect a GPU to it and use it for development and 3D modeling. Just keep in mind it uses a PCIE gen 3 slot.

[@stormk-1130]

​@@TechnicallyUnsure Its any big dif between 3.0 and 4.0? i havent notice a big dif but i could be wrong. Another youtuber told me is not that good because of win 11 not going well in epyc cpus. so he got bad perfomance.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Win 11 might cause some L3 cache performance issues but I doubt it would effect you, same for pcie gen 3 vs Gen 4. For every day tasks, dev, testing, 3d modeling, you won't notice a difference

[@stormk-1130]

@@TechnicallyUnsure Nice brother. Thank you. I hope i can build a budget epyc or threadripper lol.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Sure, good luck

[@bhok5228-ff8bs]

Nice video, the only problem i see s the power consumption and noise on load.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Yes, for noise, either you have to put the server in a rack far away from you (which is what I do), or find a better, quiet fan or use water cooling. As for power consumption, yes, powerful CPU, consumes a lot of power. Newer gen is still very expensive, even used, but they are a bit more efficient.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

Since EPYC is a more modern CPU, you can sort of configure the TDP available for the processor, which will have some impact on noise and heat output. If you don't do it, the cpu will clock itself as high as it can before it starts thermal throttling.

[@nadtz]

@@TechnicallyUnsure Depends on a lot of factors. I have a 7302 + h12ssl-i in a 4u case. With 3 120mm fans pulling air into the case and an arctic 4U-m cooler server is fine in my rack about 6 feet from my desk. Been a great little proxmox server.

[@ZombieLurker]

I think I am going to throw one of those same CPU's in a Asrock Rack ROMED8-2T ATX mobo for a NAS. Trying to make up my mind on what cpu to get... Need something that is either just right for a bare metal Truenas Scale NAS with hybrid shared storage or that can be used as a kickass Proxmox server. The price of DDR5 just isn't worth the upgrade to a 9554 Genoa I don't think. Wanted to go with Milan but the difference in price/performance between Rome and Milan, just doesn't seem worth it for the 4x price difference. Can't make up my mind though.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

The Asrock Rack ROMED8-2T ATX looks like a great option for a NAS. You can't go wrong with an EPYC for a Proxmox server either.

[@osmanfb1]

what was the ram speed/specs you used? thanks.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

I used "M393A4K40CB2-CTD7Q" but honestly, I think *almost* any 2400 DDR4 RAM would work

[@korysovec]

Is any chipset even needed? ZEN 2 and up all have dedicated IO board inside the CPU which is doing the same thing as a chipset no? So we could have a motherboard without chipset with limited IO (One PCIE, few USBs and SATA ports).

[@rupertsmith6097]

Proxmox looks interesting. Currently using xen, but I have no GPU.

[@zaidhussain5206]

Can you do a RAID with this setup ?

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Of course you can

[@mattgrimaldi13]

Gen 3 pci. Your gen 5 pci 5000 series gpu will not be happy! That ecc ram is not cheap! Or maybe it is now…

[@billkillernic]

why not Threadripper ?

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Dual CPU, ECC mem, ability to support up to 2TB RAM, etc. Threadripper is also fine, but it's expensive. This is supposed to be relatively "budget" build

[@linearburn8838]

you can get mother boards brand new for 500 ish no need for used

[@WenMare]

500w....next....

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

When fully utilizing every thread, this powerful CPU can draw up to 500W. However, if you're not using all its cores, it won’t reach that level of power consumption. As mentioned in the video, you can also choose an alternative CPU that better suits your needs.

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

Each 7542 has a TDP of 225W.

[@timramich]

It's a server, boohoo.

[@esra_erimez]

I found this video to be interesting and enjoyable

[@colestowing8695]

I found this comment to be interesting and enjoyable

[@noname-uf4je]

14:30 2929pts it is like +25% to regular score of Ryzen 9 9950X (2340pts) - what kind of "monster" is it then?🤣 as i understand you spend: 518$ on MB 399$ *2 on CPU 50$ *2 on cooler =1418$ in my "place" in regular shop "i can buy" new 9950X - 875$ mb for it 320$ (ASUS PRIME X670-P) + cooler 70$ (AK620 ZERO DARK) =1265$ all new with 2-year warranty at the local shop I've had many personal dual processor systems on different sockets in the past(1366,2011,2011-3) - they always have some unpleasant nuances - in use - I don't see any reason - to suffer on EPYCs for the sake of 25% performance. It's not a "monster", it's a waste of money. 😉 yes for 9950X "we" can not for now put 512gb RAM - "we" can only 192Gb for now. but we're not looking at this for "corporate use". Right? because companies don't usually go for a ‘cheap monster’ for 500$ like this. And FOR ME 128GB RAM memory has always been "enough" to fulfil private jobs so far. so it's easier to choose new promising parts like 9950X than "this"

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Try the stress-ng score. Try adding 2TB RAM to Ryzen 9, try dual CPU Ryzen board. There are use cases for builds like this, not everything is for gaming

[@donkiel9988]

​@@TechnicallyUnsureNot everything is for everyone. Sometimes it's nice to figure out the 'proof of concept'. I mean, I personally don't need a machine like that, but I would be really interested if a monster like that could be turned into a hackintosh. For workloads like 4k video editing or DAWs with a ton of plugins and tracks. Maybe a collaboration with TECHNolli??🤔🤷🏼‍♂️

[@ghost_of_you_tube]

Amazing 👏 😮

[@yourpcmd]

Don't know if I'd call that budget for used 6 year+ old stuff. There are full-blown servers you can buy for $1300 or less that are 4 years old or newer.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Can you share a link?

[@kristof9497]

Thank you.

[@gh975223]

nb you don't need SRIOV for pcie passthrough, you NEED SRIOV for splitting up a pcie card (network, IDEALLY GPU but consumer GPU does not have sriov support!!!! evil companuies as SRIOV is a MANDATORY consumer requriement due to lack of PCIe slots on sonsumer boards!!!!!!!!)

[@wildorb1209]

Please switch off this automatic AI translation! It sounds awful and the German isn't very good either...!

[@intender3046]

Budget...You keep saying that work, I don't think you know what it means.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Did you see the quotes around the word "budget" ? I don't think you know what quotes around a word means

[@Koop1337]

Wow you overpaid

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

For which component?

[@danthompsett2894]

My Drive List:- m.2 Drives Gigabyte 128GB Boot Drive Aliexpress 128GB Aliexpress 128GB x4 RAID 0 on a Sabrent PCI Express Card SATADOM InnoDisk 64GB RAID 0 InnoDisk 64GB RAID 0 u.2 Drives Intel 1TB u.2 Drive 2.5" Drives Kingston 228GB SSD SanDisk 1TB SSD RAID 0 SanDisk 1TB SSD RAID 0 Kingston 228GB SSD RAID 0 Kingston 228GB SSD RAID 0 Kingston 228GB SSD RAID 0 Kingston 228GB SSD RAID 0 3.5" Drives NAS NTFS RAID 0 Drives Seagate IronWolf 10TB Seagate IronWolf 10TB Seagate IronWolf 10TB Seagate IronWolf 10TB Western Digital 1.5TB Fideco USB 3.0 HDD Docking Station Kingston 228GB SSD Kingston 228GB SSD Like i said makes a great HDD Server