I've used a lot of ASUS desktop boards and never have been disappointed. However I have heard that they stop pushing BIOS updates for older boards. Have you faces such an issue?
My current HP home-server has been with me for ~10years
Starting at $5800? For 5800 I can build one hell of a threadripper or epyc system with nvme storage.
I've been seeing people try to make power architecture (ibm) servers a thing for 12+ years now, it never happens, because ordinary developers can't afford them. Compared to what you can put under your desk for a thousand bucks based on any Intel or amd, amd64 architecture system .
"Starting at $5800? For 5800 I can build one hell of a threadripper or epyc system with nvme storage."
Except that it won't have open firmware on a CPU hardly anyone targets. Whatever you build will probably be vulnerable. Unless you're running OpenBSD or something.
Depending on what you're using it for, I would take a look at Threadripper too. There are some crazy deals right now. If you don't IPMI and registered ECC, it's a great option for a ton of cores and PCIe lanes.
I cannot find anything at all that supports such a claim. Do you have any links or supporting spec sheets? All I can find are the same "Supports ECC: Yes" listing for Epyc, Threadripper, and Ryzen. The only spec differences I can find for Epyc vs. Threadripper on the memory side of things is 8-channel vs. 4-channel.
Look at specs for any X399 board and they will say something like "Supports Quad Channel DDR4 3600+(OC) & ECC UDIMM Memory" or "8 x DIMM, Max. 128GB, DDR4 3600(O.C.)... MHz ECC and non-ECC, Un-buffered Memory". Both omit buffered/registered DIMMs.
I'm setting up a home server and decided to just go with Ryzen. You get a bunch of server features (ECC RAM, lots of PCIE lanes, and lots of cores) for a lot less cash than the equivalent EPYC build.
Obviously EPYC has a place but for the home usecase you could use a Ryzen as a substitution for Intel Xeons because of the baseline features of Ryzen.
Ryzen only has 20 PCIE lanes, it's not that much. Basically the same as Intel since Intel uses DMI 3.0 (basically pcie x4) for communication to the chipset. So on Ryzen you get 16x lanes directly to CPU + 4 to chipset where it multoplexes, and on Intel you get 16x lanes directly to CPU + dmi3 to chipset which multoplexes to pcie.
Threadripper has 64 lanes, though, which is definitely a lot.
Ryzen has 24 PCIe lanes: 16 for graphics (can be split to 8/8), 4 for NVMe storage, and 4 for the chipset. So you get 4 more lanes compared to Intel's consumer platforms.
I upgraded a VMWare ESXi server hosting FreeNAS from a consumer motherboard with an Intel Core i7 3930K and it was completely painless.
[0]: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=E...
[1]: https://www.amd.com/en/products/cpu/amd-epyc-7281