Intel Quad Core Xeon's with ECC and >64GB RAM support are more like $250: https://ark.intel.com/products/134858/Intel-Xeon-E-2134-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4-50-

Intel Quad Core Xeon's with ECC and >64GB RAM support are more like $250: https://ark.intel.com/products/134858/Intel-Xeon-E-2134-Processor-8M-Cache-up-to-4-50-GHz- https://ark.intel.com/products/134858/Intel-Xeon-E-2134-Proc... Those are "only" 8 threads, but I doubt the 16 thread/4 core POWER processors are much better in practice than Intel's 8 thread/4 core processors.