Bought myself an Ampere Altra system

Offtopic, I'm so confused why this is top1 on my HN? Just a pretty normal build?

Normal ARM64 80 core system with $1000 EATX motherboard? How is this typical?

I haven’t been following hardware for a while, granted, but this is the first time I see a desktop build with an arm64 cpu. Didn’t know you can just… buy one.

I guess this post proves you still can't :)

Not that much changed since this:

https://marcin.juszkiewicz.com.pl/2019/10/23/what-is-wrong-w...

EATX is a pretty standard server motherboard form factor.

It's not even a multiple CPU board...

This is indeed a pretty standard (and weak) ARM server build.

You can get the same CPU M128-30 with 128 3ghz cores for under $800 USD.

You can throw two into a Gigabyte MP72-HB0 and fit it into a full tower case easily.

That'd only cost like $3,200 USD for 256 cores.

RAM is cheap, and that board could take 16 DIMMs.

If you used 16 GB DIMM like OP that's only 256 GB of RAM, in a server, it is not that much... only one gig per core... for like $500 USD.

Maybe for a personal build this seems extravagant but it's nothing special for a server.

For what it's worth, I've been using a Lenovo X13s for some 3 months now. It's not a desktop, and it took years for core components to be supported in mainline Linux, but I do use it as a daily driver now. The only thing that's still not working is the webcam.

It's not "your" HN, HN doesn't do algorithmic/per-user ranking. (Ed.: Actually a refreshing breath of wide social cohesion on a platform, IMHO. We have enough platforms that create bubbles for you.)

It's top1 on everyone's HN because a sufficient number of people (including myself) thought it a nice writeup about fat ARM systems.

Depends on how you look at it.

Would you call Threadripper system "a normal build"? For many people they are normal builds because they need more computing power or more PCIe lanes than "normal user" desktop has.

On the other side you have those who pretend to use raspberry/pi 3 as "an Arm desktop" despite only 1GB of ram and 4 sluggish cores.