By 2021, used Xeon E5-2697A v4 (16 cores, 3.6GHz boost) could be found for under $400. A dual-socket C612 motherboard (e.g., Supermicro X10DRi) plus two of those CPUs gave you 32 cores / 64 threads for under $1,000. A comparable new Threadripper Pro (32 cores) cost $3,500+ for the CPU alone.

Most Interesting Feature in 2021: Enterprise Scalability at "Budget" Pricing

By late 2022, most OEMs (Dell, HPE, Lenovo) planned to drop C612 from their certified hardware lists for new software releases.

Because enterprise leases typically expire after three years, a massive wave of C612-based servers (Dell PowerEdge R730, HP ProLiant DL380 Gen9) flooded the secondary market right around 2020-2021. This availability turned the C612 into the "people’s champion" of server hardware for that year.