AMD scored another design win with Velocity Micro announcing a new workstation built around the Zen-based EPYC processor. The new ProMagix HD150 is a single socket Epyc-based system that slots in between the company's existing ThreadRipper-based HD80A and the dual socket Epyc HD360A workstations. The Velocity Micro system takes the company's GX4 aluminum E-ATX chassis and crams a ton of processing power into it.
The new workstation is based around the Supermicro H11SSL motherboard and it can be confiugred with up to an AMD Epyc 7601 processor with 32 cores and 64 threads clocked at 2.2 GHz base and 3.2 GHz boost with 64MB L3 cache and 128 lanes of PCI-E. The processor which is cooled by a closed loop liquid cooler with 240mm radiator can be paired with up to 512GB DDR4-2666 ECC RDIMMs or 256GB ECC LRDIMMs for main memory and up to a 2TB Samsung 960 Pro SSD (or two Crucial MX550s) and two 8TB mechanical hard drives for storage. The Supermicro board has sixteen SATA ports as well as multiple PCI-E x16 and x8 slots so users can add plenty of additional storage and I/O expansion. Further, users can configure the system with a NVIDIA Quadro GP100 graphics accelerator as well as up to two Radeon Pro SSG Vega 10 cards (there are also NVIDIA GTX, Titan, and Quadro or AMD Vega, WX Pro, and SSG options) for GPGPU tasks. The two Radeon Pro SSG cards have 4096 stream processors, 16GB of HBM2, and 2TB of solid state storage each and are rated at 12.3 TFLOPS of single precision and 769 GFLOPS of double precision performance.
Needless to say, you can configure an extremely capable workstation thanks to AMD's Epyc that can handle both CPU and GPU efficient tasks with plenty of I/O lanes for storage and expansion. Velocity Micro claims that the HD150 workstation is aimed at simulation, rendering, 8K video editing, and machine learning workloads. The systems can be configured on their website or customized by ordering over the phone and start at $3,299 with a default one year warranty and lifetime US-based support. The workstations are built and tested in Richmond, Virginia. As far as pricing, this, ahem, Epyc system is squarely an enterprise affair with fully loaded configurations passing $33,000 easily.
It is promising to see AMD's server processor getting design wins in this market space.
I cannot comment on the
I cannot comment on the workstation equipment but I can say I bought a gaming rig from Velocity Micro in the summer of 2008. This rig continued as my gaming rig for the next 8 years with two upgrades of GPU and one keyboard. This was a quality build with quality components. When I did replace my gaming rig, it was basically a choice between Velocity Micro and Puget Systems with Puget Systems winning by a very small margin due to price/components. I encourage anyone in the market for a boutique PC build to at least consider them. I got eight years heavy use out of mine with no complaints. When I did need help, their customer service was excellent in helping determine the problem which was an out of warranty GPU that failed.
This is overpriced and that
This is overpriced and that 1P Supermicro MB lacks too many features that the Gigabyte MZ31-AR0 (rev. 1.0) |Motherboard offers with the GB Epyc motherboard offering 2 DIMM slots per channel(16 total) compared to the Supermicro that only offers 8 DIMM slots at one DIMM per channel. The GB motherboard also comes with 2, 10Gb ethernet ports and an Aspeed® AST2500 remote management controller.
Really that Supermicro 1P MB is too stripped of features compared to the GB MB.
The Epyc 7401p costs around $1075(MSRP) and $1150(retail average) and the GB motherboard costs in the range of $649-679(online). And that Velocity Micro base price system is not with a 24 core Epyc CPU as that’s and option that’s extra($855) above the base price of $3,299.
Really the base model is way too costly and I’d wait until there where more competition in the Epyc Based OEM workstation offerings but the best bet currently is to source the parts yourself and build your own until there are more Epyc OEM offerings available.
This is the first real Epyc
This is the first real Epyc workstation offering I have seen, and Velocity is known for build quality and engineering. I expect that is why they used the Supermicro board instead of GB. Kudos to them for getting this to market first, because there is a lot of work to do to get something this Epyc to run stable enough to earn a living with. (It’s not a toy)
Really this is not a great
Really this is not a great workstation offering with that Supermicro MB inside that offers a rather limited DIMM memory channel population option of only 8 DIMM slots compared to that GB MB’s 16 Dimm Slots at 2 DIMM slots per Epyc memory channel. This Velocity Kit with that minimum options at such a highe price is more an attempt at milking any Epyc early adopters and that Supermicro MB has less real workststion features than the GB MB offers.
Memory Population Options on the 16 available DIMM slots that the GB MB offers certanly will allow for more of the less expensive ECC DIMMs to be utilized on the GB MB while still alllowing the total memory capacity to remain just as high as that rather limited Supermicro MB that only offers 8 DIMM slots that will have to be populated with the more expensive higher capacity ECC DIMMs. Twice the DIMM slots can host DIMMs of half the capacity and still geive the end user the same memory Capacity as on the MB that only offers 8 DIMM slots.
The Base system Build with a 8 core Epyc lists for a higher cost than a user would have to pay for a case, 24 core Epyc P series SKU, and that GB Motherboard with a better Power supply soultion. And that Base Velocity solution does not even start out with a redundent power supply that is a must for any long rendering workloads that need to have assurences of uninterrupted usage.
Really I’d wait to see what HP, Dell and other OEMs. big and small, may be offering before I’d look into these Velocity offerings that are way overpriced and under-featured.
DDR4 DIMMS of the Registered ECC kind are very expensive and having that 16 DIMM slots Gigabyte MB with its better workstation grade features can actually be a great savings for more of those lower cost/lower capacity ECC DIMMs as well as the other GB MB features that the supermicro board lacks.
$3,299 could buy a person a very nice Epyc SP3 Gigabyte MB, Epyc 7401P(24 core 48 Thread) CPU and large Case with a redundent power supply and still leave the user with some funds remaining to purchase more of the lower cost/lower capacity ECC memory to populate those 16 DIMMs while still allowing for some great memory capacity than that Supermicro MB offers with only 8 DIMM slots. Just go and Price Registered ECC Memory or even unregistered ECC DIMMs and the higher the capacity the greater the markup.
Epyc is not a toy and that GB Motherboard with the full feature set is difinitely not a toy as much as that Supermicro MB is that comes with that rather overpriced Velocity base system offering!