Spec me a desktop pc for VMs

[FishThrower]

Hi all,

I am looking to replace my laptop with a desktop pc. The machine will be mainly used for vmware workstation running approx four VMs in a test lab.

I would also like a below average / average video card to play Civ5 , Sim City 5 and legend of grimrock.

I am guessing a quadcore CPU and 16GB of RAM would be enough. I know absolutely nothing about modern desktop hardware as I lost interest in PC gaming around 8 years ago, so I'm very behind the times!!

The VMs will mainly hold exchange 2010, sccm 2012 and a domain and a windows 7 client, I currently have a hp microserver running esx 5 but I would prefer everything to be in one physical box.

Can someone give me some rough specs which would be OK? Would a budget of 700 quid be sufficient for a base unit?

Thanks in advance

 

[Doomedspeed]

Something like this:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i5-4670K 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £197.99
1 x **B Grade** Sapphire HD 7850 2048MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £119.99
1 x Kingston HyperX Beast 16GB (2x8GB) PC3-17100C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (KHX21C11T3K2/16X) £109.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-HD3 Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £94.99
1 x Samsung 120GB SSD 840 SATA 6Gb/s Basic - (MZ-7TD120BW) £83.99
1 x Corsair Builder Series CX 500W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020047-UK) £49.99
1 x Zalman Z9 Plus Tower Case with Fan Controller - Black £49.99
1 x Corsair Hydro H80 High Performance Liquid CPU Cooler *Manufacturer Refurbished Unit - 90 Day Guarantee £35.99
1 x Corsair Fan, SP120 PWM High Pressure Fan 4 pin, Dual Pack (CO-9050014-WW) £25.99
Total : £783.91 (includes shipping : £12.50).

 

[teppic]

A bit over £700. A suggestion of basic specs:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel Core i7-4770 3.40GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £249.95
1 x Patriot Viper "Black Mamba" Generation 3 16GB (2x8GB) DDR3 PC3-17000C11 2133MHz Dual Channel Kit (PV316G213C1K) £119.99
1 x Gigabyte Z87-D3HP Intel Z87 (Socket 1150) DDR3 ATX Motherboard £109.99
1 x HIS HD 7790 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card £99.95
1 x SanDisk Extreme SSD 120GB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s Solid State Hard Drive - (SDSSDX-120G-G25) £83.99
1 x Seagate Barracuda 2TB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache - OEM (ST2000DM001) HDD £74.99
1 x Thermaltake Smart 530W '80 Plus' Power Supply £49.99
Total : £801.74 (includes shipping : £10.75).



Plus a case of your choice. If you want a lower cost you could go for an i5 4670 instead, but the hyperthreading of the i7 would be handy. You could also drop to a 7750/7770 card.