I'm after a bit of help speccing up a machine.

My trusty old Athlon has gone bang so I need to replace it with something. I'm planning to install xenserver or the free vmware hypervisor and install a few machines - a sharepoint server and client (maybe a couple of clients) for testing stuff on, a Windows 7 machine for general (but occasional) use and a linux machine.

I won't have them all on at the same time - I don't think I'll ever have more than 3 VMs on at a time.

The problem is, I don't know what's hot and what's not in the PC Hardware scene anymore so can you guys give me a hand speccing something up? I want something that's going to handle the workload, but not spend a huge amount of money.



Basically, I've got a couple of hundred quid (or, reluctantly, more) to spend on a motherboard, cpu, memory and a case.

I've already got a PSU, optical drive, and HDD so how does THIS look for a bundle? (Thanks to geiseric for the heads up to these bundles on the eBuyer site)

Seems like quite good value to me, but how do you guys reckon it's going to perform? Could something else at a similar price do better?

I'm liking the look of this case because it's quite small but still takes full sized ATX boards.

Thanks for any help guys.

For virtualising, you'll want reasonable horse power and lots of memory. I'd look at a mid-range Core i7, or an i5 if your budget can't stretch to that, quad core would be a minimum, if you are going for multiple running VMs. RAM wise, I'd look at at least 8GB, 16GB or more would be better (although you are probably talking a workstation motherboard, if you are going over 16GB, which would blow your budget, just for the motherboard), if you are going to be running a lot of machines. You'll also want good disk throughput, I'd look at either putting the VMs on different disks, if you can't afford a decent RAID controller.

Nick I did this for wecookie yesterday -

Intel G6950 2.80GHz 3MB Socket 1156 Cache Retail Box Processor £74.95

Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H H55 Socket 1156 VGA DVI HDMI Out 8 CHannel Audio ATX Motherboard £77.63

Corsair 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz Memory Kit Unbuffered CL9 £79.01

would fit nice and snug in your suggested case

I don't think that'll have the juice for Nick's reqs. However, I think Dave is ignoring the budget.

The best compromise is 4gig of 1333 RAM as above, the same mobo as above, but in P55M flavour and an i5-750/760. Native quad core but no hyperthreading. That's £300 then a case will be whatever you want from £35ish up. If that's too rich (which maybe it is) then the LEAST I would go with, is the above but with an i3-530 which does at least have hyperthreading. But tbh, I think that's a little underspecced.

The alternative is to go AMD multicore, but the performance differential with Intel is quiet large across the range atm.

Thanks for the replies guys.

I was looking at AMD last night and they seem pretty reasonable. I was lookin at gettin a 2.9GHz X3 then trying to unlock an extra core. Price was around £60 IIRC.

Okenobi - are intel worth the extra cash? I don't have my finger on the pulse in terms of performance, but specs wise AMD options appear better value???

Dave - that stuff is all way over budget. DDR3 is expensive stuff, and even 8GB will stretch it. Never mind 16 or even 32! An i7 isn't going to happen either I don't think.

esxi needs RAM, a lot of RAM. On my test box 6GB was a rather low and that wasn't doing a massive amount of VM's.
Intel beat AMD clock for clock so I'd go intel all the way, quads are a minimum really and you need some decent speed (overclocking works).
You also have to make sure things like the nic are on the hcl (either official one or the community one) as it won't work otherwise, an intel pro 1000 is the card of choice for many whitebox esxi boxes as it's cheap(ish) but works.

I'm also assuming you've got another machine to access these vm's on as esxi is just a hypervisor.

Hence the reason I said a Core i5, or an i7 if the budget will stretch.

RAM, and lots of it, is an inescapable necessity for doing effective virtualisation.

Tell me about it, currently about to order 48GB per box for my esxi project I'm doing

Given the above two posts, that's why I made my suggestion. Good enough, but not ludicrously expensive.

AMD do well in multi-threaded benches, but are still well behind Intel clock for clock. You could try an inexpensive AM3 multicore, pair it with £150 worth of 8gig RAM and a cheap mobo, as an alternative to what I originally suggested, but the CPU performance would be way down. Similar money though.

The AMD solution is specifically tailored to memory intensive, multi-threaded work.
The Intel one is far more rounded.

As a comparison, i7 will be well in excess of £400 plus case.

But don't rely on hyperthreading. esxi only uses hyperthreaded cores if the physical cores are at 100% (i.e. it runs out of resources)

No, of course. I was referring to my i5 750/60 suggestion. But the i3 would still be better than the Pentium if the budget is immovable.

Well the i5 750 is £161 which is too pricey for me.

By comparison - the AMD X3 445 is only £60. Out of the box it's only triple core, but a forth can usually be unlocked in the BIOS.

The AMD is 2.9GHz, the i5 750 is 2.66.

Surely the AMD is the better buy????

Ding dong -

Argon Intel Core i3 2.93GHz @ 4.00GHz Overclocked Bundle £269.99

Bundle Specification
- CPU: Intel Core i3 2.93GHz @ 4.00GHz (£82.29)
- Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H55M-UD2H (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard (£66.99)
- RAM: Corsair XMS3 (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel (£86.95)
- Cooler: Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro Rev2 CPU cooler (£14.98)

No mate. Not that simple. The Intel architecture is far more capable than the AMD. Instructions per clock are way higher, which means even if you overclock the Athlon to 4ghz, the i5 would still be faster.

But if budget is crucial, you've got no choice.

In the old days, a 2.2Ghz AMD was equivalent to a 3.5Ghz Intel... Then Intel made more efficient chips and turned the tables, now the AMDs are the ones that are way behind.