Can we create a cheap Chinese deals thread?

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coldasthepoles

coldasthepoles

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  • #1
    I was in the process of looking for a suitable motherboard to build a box for vm/nas hosting since my existing box is underpowered.
    My budget put me squarely in the world of Xeon-D its 8 core solutions.

    I wanted additional pcie ports but couldn't find anything.
    So I decided to go ebay surfing and found this.

    AMD EPYC 7551P CPU 32 Cores + Supermicro H11SSL-i Motherboard +4x 32GB 2133P RAM

    I thought no way.

    32 Cores, 64 threads
    16 sata ports?
    6 Pcie Ports

    CPU/motherboard and Ram?

    for $500?

    This seemed like an insanely good deal, so I kept poking around and it turns out that ebay is teeming with these deals and they appear to be completely legit.

    Why have I seen noone talking about this?
     
    Paladin

    Paladin

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  • #2
    The general assumption is that they are factory reject parts that didn't pass QA or are knockoff parts that are not what they claim to be (rebadged CPUs, RAM that doesn't meet advertised speeds, etc.) or may have been stolen. They won't get warranty support or, in the case of some items, can't run updated BIOS/Firmware, etc. They seem to always be 'buyer pays return shipping' which makes a return expensive if possible at all and the ebay sellers may simply roll away over night if they get too many complaints.

    There are a few videos on youtube from channels who have bought things like that only to find they were engineering samples that didn't work quite right, or were straight up fraud with rebadged parts or you simply get a box of rocks in the mail.
     
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    coldasthepoles

    coldasthepoles

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  • #3
    The user I am buying from has 54K sold items and seems to be selling these en masse.

    To me this looks like the fallout from the collapse of bitcoin farming. The same way the shortage of gpus was caused by the rising of mining with the fall of mining it seems like there is a glut here.

    I have seen other forums test some of these boards extensively namely the truenas forums.

    So i think the assumption that they are just a scam is just that. I think this may be a genuine windfall as these are rela Older boards.
     
    Paladin

    Paladin

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  • #5
    Yeah, it might be worth a shot, you never know until you know. For home use, it is probably worth the risk assuming you actually need that kind of hardware but don't have the budget for it. For most people who need that level of hardware, they also need good warranty support etc. for business use, etc. so it really doesn't work out. For most home users, they don't need that kind of hardware. If anything, it would work out well for lab use or something at work, maybe. But then you have the worry of it showing up with firmware level malware you can't remove and associated problems.
     
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    coldasthepoles

    coldasthepoles

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  • #6
    Paladin said:
    Yeah, it might be worth a shot, you never know until you know. For home use, it is probably worth the risk assuming you actually need that kind of hardware but don't have the budget for it. For most people who need that level of hardware, they also need good warranty support etc. for business use, etc. so it really doesn't work out. For most home users, they don't need that kind of hardware. If anything, it would work out well for lab use or something at work, maybe. But then you have the worry of it showing up with firmware level malware you can't remove and associated problems.
    Click to expand...
    I currently have a Nas box and ESXi box.

    The nas box and esxi box are criminally underpowered.
    The plan is to upgrade the esxi box and virtualize the nas.
    As far as potential malware I will be disabling the onboard networking and using a pcie dual networking card.
    The ipmi port will be limited to local traffic.
     
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    r0twhylr

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  • #7
    It's getting off the topic of cheap Chinese deals, but as far as running a VM host, consider this instead:

    www.ebay.com

    HP Z840 28 Core Workstation 2X 2.40GHz E5-2680 V4 128GB RAM No GPU/ HDD/ OS | eBay

    HP Z840 28 Core Workstation 2X 2.40GHz E5-2680 V4 128GB RAM No GPU/ HDD/ OS.
    www.ebay.com

    HP Z840 workstation, 2 x Xeon E5-2680v4, 128GB ECC RAM.
    Slightly dated CPUs, but still perfectly usable (should run ESXi 8 no problem). Similar amount and speed Registered ECC RAM, similar cores, plus you get a chassis with lots of expansion room and an 1125w power supply. Plus, the Z840 has a total of 14 SAS and SATA ports on the mobo. I have a similar one with 5 x 4TB WD RED PRO (CMR) and 8 x 1TB SSD running my VM farm. It is basically a server, but without the fan noise.
     
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    Incarnate

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  • #9
    Colin Richardson said:
    LOL wanted to follow up on this and I believe OP is banned. Kinda funny but fits right in with why we don’t buy $500 EPYC servers.
    Click to expand...
    Yes, when I read "ebay is teeming with these deals and they appear to be completely legit." I was going to ask in what world do they live in where they think everything on ebay looks "completely legit"? About as legit as buying a 200TB SSD for $99, right?
     
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    Colin Richardson

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  • #10
    Incarnate said:
    Yes, when I read "ebay is teeming with these deals and they appear to be completely legit." I was going to ask in what world do they live in where they think everything on ebay looks "completely legit"? About as legit as buying a 200TB SSD for $99, right?
    Click to expand...

    Ya it’s not the $500 dollar EPYC servers I worry about, it’s when they are savvy enough to mimic packaging, price it properly etc that scares me.

    There’s a certain point where it’s not worth dealing with this crap, it’s actually why companies buy Apple and Dell hardware with Apple Business Manager or use Windows Autopilot.

    Supply chain security is security nowadays.
     
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    wireframed

    wireframed

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  • #12
    No idea if the original deal was legit, but I upgraded my home Proxmox server to an E5-2690 v4, and the CPU cost like $50 with warranty from a danish retailer. Hardware from that time period isn't super expensive anymore since it's usually just pulled from decomissioned servers.

    Granted the EPYC has nearly twice the cores, but the Xeon holds its own on single-thread performance, and for home use, 14 cores is fine - I'll take the slightly faster single-core I think. :)
     
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