The AMD EPYC 7251 is a server/workstation processor with 8 cores, launched in June 2017. It is part of the EPYC lineup, using the Zen (Naples) architecture with Socket SP3. Thanks to AMD Simultaneous Multithreading (SMT) the core-count is effectively doubled, to 16 threads. To further increase overall system performance, up to two EPYC 7251 CPUs can work together in a multi-processor (SMP) configuration. EPYC 7251 has 32 MB of L3 cache and operates at 2.1 GHz by default, but can boost up to 2.9 GHz, depending on the workload. AMD is making the EPYC 7251 on a 14 nm production node using 4,800 million transistors. The silicon die of the chip is not fabricated at AMD, but at the foundry of GlobalFoundries. You may freely adjust the unlocked multiplier on EPYC 7251, which simplifies overclocking greatly, as you can easily dial in any overclocking frequency.
With a TDP of 120 W, the EPYC 7251 consumes a lot of power, so good cooling is definitely needed. AMD's processor supports DDR4 memory with an eight-channel interface. The highest officially supported memory speed is 2400 MT/s, but with overclocking (and the right memory modules) you can go even higher. ECC memory is supported, too, which is an important capability for mission-critical systems, to avoid data corruption. For communication with other components in the machine, EPYC 7251 uses a PCI-Express Gen 3 connection. This processor lacks integrated graphics, you might need a graphics card.
Hardware virtualization is available on the EPYC 7251, which greatly improves virtual machine performance. Additionally, IOMMU virtualization (PCI passthrough) is supported, so that guest virtual machines may directly use host hardware. Programs using Advanced Vector Extensions (AVX) can run on this processor, boosting performance for calculation-heavy applications. Besides AVX, AMD is including the newer AVX2 standard, too, but not AVX-512.