So, my direct contact in IT is a very helpful fella, very excited about getting us some kicking hardware. Right now we are using a server that was retired from another building, its only 2 years old but has some dual XEON 2620 processors (i think) in it that gives us 32 threads @ about 2ghz each. Not bad right?
Well, he stopped by and was asking me what i would need next, as they are looking to update their main server stack and might be able to sneak something in there for us. I was just looking at specing out some HP z840's and comparable Threadripper systems and such. He asked how much each workstation was going for, since we are thinking of not using specific server grade hardware, just a couple workstation nodes stuck in a rack. I mentioned that we could shoot for the moon and get a couple of 88 thread beasts for about 6-8 k each then waited for his cringey response.
His respnse was "Well, that should not be an issue, I'll have them order one up for you to test. lemme know what you want." I was like seriously? he said that their average virtualization server with software started at 20k, so this is peanuts.
This will be a fun next month or two researching and designing a couple builds!