Workstation recommendations

[Mikey]

Looking to replace some items to update to a new powerful workstation rig, I don't game these days and I'm interested in overclocking at all.

Looking for a rig that can running hyper-v well and dual boot to esxi

I'm prob looking to spend circa £500-£750, not 100% TBH.

Currently have that will be ported over
120GB Sandisk SSD
2 x 1TB Samsung drives - will be put into a QNAP.
CoolerMaster Silenco case
ATI HD5870 GFX card - may sell
Corsair 520w PSU not sure if powerful enough these days.

The rest of the old kit, CPU, RAM, Mobo will be sold / disposed of at the tip

Other thought is wait for x99, but will this be overkill for what I'm looking for. Alternative is a Z97X-UD3H, 32GB RAM and CPU..?

Also looking at getting a decent NIC that will support LACP so I can portchannel on the switch / NAS, failing that it'll be used for iSCSI / SAN VLAN

 

[biuro74]

How many virtual machines it would serve ? Do you have 10Gbit LAN ?

 

[Mikey]

How many virtual machines it would serve ?

Circa 4 - 5 as I have a work laptop with VM Workstation and 16GB RAM available to leverage. Mainly looking at doing some skills updating for 2012 R2, SQL 2012

Virtual machines, internet and iTunes are my only concerns

No I sadly don't have a 10GBit LAN

Only at work, which I'm sorting out the modules at present on DL360G8s and switch modules

Main stuff I need to look into at the moment is Cisco UCS which we use for our ESXi platform

 

[joeyjojo]

As you say, your choices are 1150 or 2011.

For the former I wouldn't feel forced to go for Z97 as your budget is quite low and you'll want to put as much money as possible into the CPU and memory. A board like this one would be more sensible IMO. Then your remaining choice is whether you will 1. benefit from hyperthreading, and 2. need the virtualisation "extras", to decide between an i5 or i7 (or 1150 Xeon, like the i7 but cheaper).

The latter of course gives you access to higher core counts, but at a much higher cost, probably in excess of your budget:

YOUR BASKET
1 x Intel 4930K 3.40GHz (Ivybridge-E) Socket LGA2011 Processor - Retail (BX80633I74930K) £429.95
1 x Kingston HyperX Beast 32GB (4x8GB) PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Quad Channel Kit (KHX16C9T3K4/32X) £249.95
1 x Gigabyte X79-UD3 Intel X79 (Socket 2011) DDR3 Motherboard £145.99
Total : £835.49 (includes shipping : £8.00).



The components you're carrying forward look fine, including the PSU.

 

[Mikey]

Open to expanding budget, at one stage I was going to drop £900 on a precision range outlet desktop. I also considered the Asus X79 WS range

Just not 100% firm on budget as selling and hopefully 123d.

Think I am 8 weeks from any prospects of moving and 123d will go for an R32.