Advice on a new mobo combination for general and VMWARE

Mr Bump

Mr Bump

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I need advice ona new mobo combo, split between gaming /photoshop and most important hosting VMWARE Workstation and a training lab.

I allrady have all the SSD and HDD and a 1060 Graphics card and a posh PSU so i am just looking for mobo/cpu and ram.

the main thing is yes a bit more boost for games over my current AMD 955 II blacked edition with 8gb but its all about the VMWARE setup just as much.

i believe physical cores and amd seem to have the punch on this and am thinking and FX-8300 8 core processor probably a board like below

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/gig...3plus-ddr3-pcie-20-(x16)-2-way-crossfirex-atx
 
aplogies for bad grammer on a tablet.
 
If you are looking to upgrade the motherboard and ram would you not be better going for a DDR4 setup since that is now the standard in ram? I can't comment on cpu since i prefer intel personally but ram wise i would be looking for the latest standard and something like 16gb in terms of quantity.
 
keeweeman said:
If you are looking to upgrade the motherboard and ram would you not be better going for a DDR4 setup since that is now the standard in ram? I can't comment on cpu since i prefer intel personally but ram wise i would be looking for the latest standard and something like 16gb in terms of quantity.
Click to expand...

not 100% sure, but don't think AMD AM3+ boards has DDR4 at all?
 
Mr Bump said:
I need advice ona new mobo combo, split between gaming /photoshop and most important hosting VMWARE Workstation and a training lab.

I allrady have all the SSD and HDD and a 1060 Graphics card and a posh PSU so i am just looking for mobo/cpu and ram.

the main thing is yes a bit more boost for games over my current AMD 955 II blacked edition with 8gb but its all about the VMWARE setup just as much.

i believe physical cores and amd seem to have the punch on this and am thinking and FX-8300 8 core processor probably a board like below

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/gig...3plus-ddr3-pcie-20-(x16)-2-way-crossfirex-atx
Click to expand...

for the CPU I would go for something like FX-9590 with 4.7GHz clocks (depending on PSU that is, as this one will be using twice as much as FX-8300)
 
keeweeman said:
No worries, like I say I tend to go Intel for processors so am unfamiliar with the nuances of the current amd series. Seems daft that they haven't produced something to work with ddr4 though given that it's been on the market for a couple from years now!
Click to expand...

I am Intel myself (but used to have some AMD build requests from friends etc.). New generation of AMD (RYZEN) sounds interesting (http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/new-prod...or-release-date-price-specs-features-3643552/)
 
quite happy with AMD to be honest my current setup is 7 years old and still rock solid and like i say it is more about VMWARE and cores.
Also I will be looking at 64gb of RAM.

I also need to bring it in at realistic money.
 
Watch out for compatibility, especially around disk/raid controllers and nics. Supposedly its a bit picky.

That said esxi 6.5 runs fine on the old amd cpu and raid controller Microserver N40L I have with an Intel nc364t quad port nic.

If it's only for labs it doesn't have to be massive spec.
 
A few friends/acquaintances have had issues with virtualisation on non-Intel and even desktop hardware.

Be aware that AMD cores share the floating point co-processors so when you pay for two cores, you aren't really getting two cores for operations involving floating point maths.
I think you'd be better going for a Hyperthreaded Intel Quad core.

If you want a cheap box offering a high core count, think about buying some old server hardware. You could pick up a box with a pair of Xeon L5640 CPU. That would give you 12 physical cores, 24 hyper-threaded ones. And as it's a low power CPU, it's not going to cost the earth to run. Or alternatively I see a dual Xeon L5640 CPU servers (8 cores/16 logical threads) on a famous auction site for < £200 with lots of RAM and disks. Unfortunately the ones I see are rack mount, which might mean you have to think about where it goes (ikea lack rack perhaps? https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack) and factor in the noise.

I've seen more practical tower servers crop up at reasonable prices with suitable processors for this sort of thing.

Honestly, I'd be quite tempted my self but my rack isn't deep enough for any of these beasts, so I'll be white-box building a hypervisor for my lab work at some point. I currently use my desktop, but that's less than idea.
 
A few friends/acquaintances have had issues with virtualisation on non-Intel and even desktop hardware.

Be aware that AMD cores share the floating point co-processors so when you pay for two cores, you aren't really getting two cores for operations involving floating point maths.
I think you'd be better going for a Hyperthreaded Intel Quad core.

If you want a cheap box offering a high core count, think about buying some old server hardware. You could pick up a box with a pair of Xeon L5640 CPU. That would give you 12 physical cores, 24 hyper-threaded ones. And as it's a low power CPU, it's not going to cost the earth to run. Or alternatively I see a dual Xeon L5640 CPU servers (8 cores/16 logical threads) on a famous auction site for < £200 with lots of RAM and disks. Unfortunately the ones I see are rack mount, which might mean you have to think about where it goes (ikea lack rack perhaps? https://wiki.eth0.nl/index.php/LackRack) and factor in the noise.

I've seen more practical tower servers crop up at reasonable prices with suitable processors for this sort of thing.

Honestly, I'd be quite tempted my self but my rack isn't deep enough for any of these beasts, so I'll be white-box building a hypervisor for my lab work at some point. I currently use my desktop, but that's less than idea.
 
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