Okay, I have bad news and good news. I'll get the bad news out the way first.

Project Personal Datacentre is being heavily delayed, due to lack of funding. Parents made the decision for me to get unpaid technical training, in addition to the other two certifications that I'll already have by the end of this year (and two Associate's degrees). And I just found out that I wouldn't be able to work this summer - today. So, any stable source of disposable income, to power the new ESXi build is currently non-existent. And I'm not expecting them to start helping me buy any high-end parts (because they haven't ever done that). The project is being stretched out over the course of 2019 and 2020, to accommodate for limited resources. The bad part is, I had a job already lined up (since I actually stayed in good standing with my higher-ups at Amazon, and their wages went up recently).

In addition to not having the income, I am still at the mercy of volatile market prices, so I won't be able to buy anything better/newer after this delay - which only serves to age the target platform (x79/C602) even more, before I even get my hands on it. And I have to hope that the prices of the IvyBridge-EP E5 Xeons don't go up in that 12-month period, or ESXi goes down for good  I already told them that I'd be going for this project, in conjunction with my expected 2nd certification (VMware). So, this is like getting ignored. If this goes as I think it will, the Threadripper upgrade will be delayed to at least 2021 - and who knows what things will be like by then?!

The good news is, I have a mass sale going on - on my eBay store  So, if my inventory gets bought up, I can make upwards of 1k USD on the sales, which would take care of about half of the initial cost of Project Datacentre (assuming that parents don't try to confiscate anything "for College"). The first item to purchase will be the time-sensitive one - the GTX 1080 Ti. The rest can be bought at almost any time (aside from maybe the Xeons - still concerned). I can at least use the GTX 1080 Ti in the T7500 until the rest of Project Datacentre becomes possible again (2020). Still miffed...

P.S. The best I can hope for is that mom and dad just throw eBay gift cards at me for my birthday this year  

https://www.ebay.com/sch/tophatproductions115_0/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=