I believe this is best alternative at the moment for my next Proxmox build, threadripper is out reach for me and Ryzen doesn’t have the PCI lanes or memory channels. So I guess my best option is a 7542 + Supermicro MB + 128G for about $1,000.
Yeah, I’ve got my eye on a 7452 (seems like a good balance for core count and TDP) and a H12SSL (PCIe 4, and an upgrade path to Gen3 - although the power draw doesn’t make that super attractive)