AMD EPYC Single‑Socket Desk‑Side Compute Server

Punch Technology EPYC Pedestal Compute Server – AMD EPYC 9655P 96-Core Desk-Side HPC System

The Punch Technology EPYC Pedestal Compute Server is a quiet, desk-side AMD EPYC 9655P compute platform delivering 96 cores and 192 threads of Zen 5 performance in a full-tower chassis engineered for office and laboratory environments.

This EPYC pedestal compute server is built for engineers, researchers, and infrastructure teams who require data-centre-class CPU performance without rack infrastructure, noise, or accessibility constraints. At its core is the AMD EPYC 9655P, a 96-core Zen 5 processor with 192 threads, a 4.5GHz maximum boost clock, and 384MB of L3 cache, running on the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 SP5 server motherboard with 384GB of DDR5 ECC RDIMM memory across all 12 memory channels. The result is a system that handles the most demanding sustained multi-threaded compute workloads while remaining quiet enough for shared office use. This desk-side AMD EPYC 9655P compute platform is built and tested in the UK and covered by a 3-year parts and labour warranty.

High-Performance NVMe Storage – WD Black SN7100

The 1TB WD Black SN7100 NVMe SSD provides the operating system, application, and dataset storage foundation for this platform, delivering sequential read speeds of up to 7,250MB/s and write speeds of up to 6,900MB/s over a PCIe Gen 4 x4 interface. Built on SanDisk’s BiCS8 218-layer TLC NAND and the Polaris 3 controller with Host Memory Buffer technology, the SN7100 is among the fastest PCIe Gen 4 drives available and is well suited to fast OS boot, rapid application loading, and responsive AI pipeline and dataset access. Additional high-performance storage can be added via PCIe expansion slots or the motherboard’s MCIO 8i ports, enabling multi-drive NVMe configurations as workload storage requirements grow.

AMD EPYC 9655P – Zen 5, 96 Cores, Full 12-Channel Memory

The AMD EPYC 9655P is built on AMD’s Zen 5 architecture and delivers 96 cores and 192 threads with a base clock of 2.6GHz and a maximum boost of 4.5GHz, backed by 384MB of L3 cache. The P designation indicates this processor is optimised for single-socket platforms, delivering identical performance to the standard 9655 at a lower cost by removing unused multi-socket capability. Critically, this system populates all 12 DIMM slots of the Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 with 384GB of DDR5 ECC RDIMM memory running at 5200MHz, ensuring full 12-channel memory bandwidth is available to the processor. This is the memory architecture EPYC is designed to exploit – each channel pair feeds a separate memory controller within the CPU, providing substantially higher aggregate bandwidth than any desktop or workstation platform. For memory-bound workloads including CFD simulation, FEA analysis, large dataset processing, and in-memory virtualisation, this bandwidth advantage is significant and measurable.

Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2 – Full-Tower, Low Acoustic Design

The Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2 is an exceptional full-tower chassis for a desk-side compute server, combining the internal volume required to house the SilverStone XE360-SP5 360mm AIO cooler, full-length expansion cards, and high airflow fans within a design that prioritises acoustic output. Four be quiet! Silent Wings 4 140mm PWM fans are fitted as standard – among the quietest 140mm fans available, running at low RPM under sustained load while maintaining strong airflow across the motherboard and expansion area. The Lian Li SX Platinum PSU adds further acoustic benefit through its fanless operation below 40% load, meaning the system runs in near-silence during lighter workloads and remains tolerably quiet even at full compute load. GPU clearance of up to 435mm and seven PCIe expansion slots provide substantial future expansion headroom.

Dual 10GbE, PCIe Gen 5 Expansion and Management LAN

The Gigabyte MZ33-AR1 provides dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports via Broadcom BCM57416 controllers with NCSI support, eliminating the need for add-in network adapters and ensuring high-bandwidth connectivity to shared storage, render farms, virtualisation hosts, and data pipelines is available out of the box. A dedicated 1GbE management LAN provides out-of-band server management independently of the primary network interfaces. PCIe Gen 5 expansion slots support future accelerator, networking, or high-speed storage upgrades, and multiple MCIO 8i ports enable direct NVMe storage expansion as workload requirements evolve. The NVIDIA T400 professional GPU handles display output across up to four monitors via four Mini-DisplayPort 1.4 connectors, providing a stable, certified display environment for console access, visualisation, and remote desktop workflows.

Ideal for

• Engineering simulation and analysis – CFD, FEA, and EDA workloads
• HPC pre-processing, post-processing, and compute nodes
• Virtualisation, containerised lab, and development environments
• Scientific and academic research requiring high core counts and large memory
• Software compilation, CI build servers, and data pipelines
• Quiet office-based or laboratory high-performance computing

The Punch Technology EPYC Pedestal Compute Server is the right platform for engineers, researchers, and infrastructure teams who need genuine enterprise-class compute performance in an office or laboratory setting without rack infrastructure, and without the acoustic output of traditional servers. It is not a gaming system or a general workstation – it is a focused compute platform, and every component has been chosen with that purpose in mind. Where GPU compute is also required, the system can be configured with additional accelerator cards on request.

Built and tested in the UK by Punch Technology, every system comes with a 3-year parts and labour warranty, backed by over 30 years of workstation and server building experience and our status as an AMD Elite System Builder. As a built-to-order platform, estimated lead times will be confirmed at point of order.

Full Specification

Full Specification