In the hunt for a development machine, I got to the next phase. I did some shopping, and there it is: my own Ampere Altra-based system.
Why?
As you may have read in my previous post, I used several AArch64 systems for local development. And the latest one, an Apple MacBook Pro, is nice and fast but has some limits — does not support 64k page size. Which I need for my work.
Let’s go cheap
So I have decided to buy myself an Ampere Altra system. As cheap as possible.
AArch64 server parts
The only part I needed to buy brand new was a motherboard. And the only “affordable” one was AsrockRack ALTRA8BUD-1L2T, which was a product for data centres (so I was told).
Next, a used processor. At first, the idea was to buy a Q64-22 (64 cores, 2.2 GHz clock), but when the seller on eBay was not responding, one of my friends decided to upgrade his Altra systems and offered me a Q80-30 (80 cores, 3.0 GHz clock).
The CPU requires cooling. There are not many options for the LGA 4926 socket. I found an Arctic Freezer 4U-M in one of the online stores here in Poland and bought the only one they had.
Each computer needs memory, right? So I went with used ones again, as there is a huge market for used server parts. I bought eight sticks of 16GB each; the model is SK-Hynix HMA82GR7CJR8N-XN. It is not present on the official Ampere Altra memory Approved Vendor List.
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