> The parent was asking for something "off the shelf", and I took this to mean purchasing a motherboard by itself. The parent did ask about a mobo, specificall

> The parent was asking for something "off the shelf", and I took this to mean purchasing a motherboard by itself. The parent did ask about a mobo, specifically, but I think it's a stretch that the question was about the component on its own, at least in the context of the broader conversation of feasibility. I took the "off the shelf" question to be synonymous with "commodity". That is, the opposite of (truly) custom. One doesn't have to be Google or Facebook and design a board layout to get 8 sockets. One can just order it from the same vendor as all the other commodity hardware. > it probably makes more sense to just buy the system I'm asserting that this is what every commercial purchaser does, anyway.