I got the Threadripper new back in 2020 right before the world shut down lol, and I just picked up the i3 this week from eBay used for about $30. It was the cheapest/most efficient chip I could find that supported 64GB memory. I also got a used supermicro board for dirt cheap 😄

The lab is 2 nodes:

1: Hypervisor (Proxmox)
- AMD Threadripper 2950X
- 128GB RAM
- GTX 1070 (Plex GPU passthrough)
- 10 x 8TB NAS HDD in a Raidz1

2: NAS (TrueNAS core)
- Intel i3 8100
- 64GB RAM
- 6 x 26TB raidz1, 10 x 8/4 TB HDD’s across 3 other ZFS pools

Balancing performance vs. efficiency

The usual stuff! 😄 Plex, Minecraft, some macOS VM’s, and a little AD/SCCM/Intune environment for good measure!