For years, there have been so-called Intel X58, X79, and X99 motherboards manufactured by companies that had no official distribution in the West such as Huananzhi, Machinist, Qiyida, Jginyue, etc., but in fact these had server chipset equivalents such as 5520, 5500, C602, C612, etc. salvaged from dead server motherboards and integrated into new desktop case compatible ones. People would usually pair these with used/retired Intel Xeon E5 V1, V2, V3, or V4 CPUs and server registered ECC RAM. To procure these motherboards, one would have to go to AliExpress or buy from eBay sellers based in China. The target market audiences for these were primarily the domestic mainland Chinese market, the Global South, and some western tech enthusiasts who like to experiment with exotic hardware.
I was looking for motherboard from the previously mentioned companies that were compatible with first and second-gen Intel Scalable Xeons, but none were to be found and I’m assuming it was either due to economics and/or technical limitations.
However, I found motherboards by Huananzhi and Jginyue compatible with AMD Epyc 7002 (Rome) and 7003 (Milan) CPUs; these don’t have salvaged chipsets, since the chipset functions are built into the Epyc CPUs. Compared to the so-called X79 and X99 motherboards with salvaged chipsets that were historically $120 USD and below, these Epyc compatible motherboards were typically priced $500 USD and above and even accounting for inflation, that is significantly more.
