# Help me build a personal virtbox/playground



## blergh (Mar 1, 2014)

Herro!

Looking for some help/input in regards to building a new virtbox for personal use. I've been looking at something cheap like a E3-1220 or similar as i want/need low power-usage but I am far too unfamiliar with todays hardware to simply pick something out. I've been considering a cheaper i5 but not sure how that compares to anything AMD-based (apart from AMD using a ton more power). Any hardware-gurus available to help?

My budget would be around ~950 USD but preferably less.

Intended usage is simply a few VM's as well as handle some zfs-pools, nothing that requires a tun of CPU really. Just something that i can "grow" with and that will last me a good few years (My old Q6600 was retired just a few months back).


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## blergh (Mar 1, 2014)

As is I'm looking at the following;


Intel Core i5-4570S, 65W, 2.9 - 3.6 GHz
Crucial DDR3 BallistiX 1600Mhz 8GB KIT
MSI B85M-E45 LGA1150
Noctua NH-L9i CPU Cooler
Something with good power-to-performance ratio as well as something quiet.


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## WebSearchingPro (Mar 1, 2014)

How many disks are you looking at running?


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## blergh (Mar 1, 2014)

WebSearchingPro said:


> How many disks are you looking at running?



Looking at going with two 840's in softraid for this one only. The box might possibly be using a LSI 9211-8i later on in combination with a standalone storage-pod. Waiting on the storage-pod to come back in stock first tho.


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## mikho (Mar 1, 2014)

Colocated or @home?


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## blergh (Mar 1, 2014)

mikho said:


> Colocated or @home?



Home.


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## pcan (Mar 1, 2014)

Look at Dell Poweredge T20 entry-level server. The Xeon model is quite powerful and still cheap (discounts over the public Dell site price are always available). It is quiet and you can expand it with standard components. On my home build, I added 4 Kingston 8 Gb ECC RAM sticks and replaced the stock drive with a 840 EVO; it works perfectly.


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## WebSearchingPro (Mar 1, 2014)

pcan said:


> Look at Dell Poweredge T20 entry-level server. The Xeon model is quite powerful and still cheap (discounts over the public Dell site price are always available). It is quiet and you can expand it with standard components. On my home build, I added 4 Kingston 8 Gb ECC RAM sticks and replaced the stock drive with a 840 EVO; it works perfectly.


I was going to suggest that, but I'm not sure if there is room for a raid card since its a smaller case. They actually had a $100 off coupon @ Dell.com that just expired this morning.


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## pcan (Mar 1, 2014)

There is space for a full lenght card. The case is smaller than the Dell T110-II, but only slightly. I also tried to use it as workstation, with a spare nVidia Quadro FX1800 I have around: it accepted it without any issue.


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## mikho (Mar 1, 2014)

blergh said:


> Home.


I use a HP ML110 at home as my vsphere server.


All I wish for is that I used better disks. 


ML110 are cheap and silent. If you don't do alot of CPU intensive tasks it would peobably be ok.


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## pcan (Mar 2, 2014)

I also use a ML110 G5 at home as ESXi server (with a Smart Array E200i); the Dell T20 is the Hyper-V server and a HP N36L microserver (with remote access card) is the fileserver. All three are cheap, silent and fits perfectly at home. The Dell T20 supports more RAM, has a better CPU, and uses less power than the ML110 G5, so it is the best choice for me.


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## blergh (Mar 2, 2014)

pcan said:


> Look at Dell Poweredge T20 entry-level server. The Xeon model is quite powerful and still cheap (discounts over the public Dell site price are always available). It is quiet and you can expand it with standard components. On my home build, I added 4 Kingston 8 Gb ECC RAM sticks and replaced the stock drive with a 840 EVO; it works perfectly.


Judging by the current pricing in Sweden, this would be a pretty bad deal as the E3-1225 model would be about $800-850 - Sounds a bit too high for what it is.



mikho said:


> I use a HP ML110 at home as my vsphere server.
> 
> 
> All I wish for is that I used better disks.
> ...


Which generation tho? G7?


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## pcan (Mar 2, 2014)

The T20 E3-1225 list price on my country Dell web site in january was 459 EUR + VAT, and it dropped to 375 + VAT after a phone call to the Dell rep (january is end-of-quarter time for Dell). $800 is too much. Try calling Dell, asking for a discount. They never refused it, on my experience.


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## blergh (Mar 2, 2014)

pcan said:


> The T20 E3-1225 list price on my country Dell web site in january was 459 EUR + VAT, and it dropped to 375 + VAT after a phone call to the Dell rep (january is end-of-quarter time for Dell). $800 is too much. Try calling Dell, asking for a discount. They never refused it, on my experience.


Their website lists a "running discount" for the T20, still expensive tho (Old proc+4GB RAM). I suppose i have to call them to see what kind of deal i can get as a non-business, highly doubt it'd be much better than the current offer listed on the website (seems like resellers have the same one running too)


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## mikho (Mar 2, 2014)

blergh said:


> Which generation tho? G7?


It's hidden away in the attic so I can't easily access it but I never need hands on it.


Counting backwards I guess it is a G6 or possible G5, had it for awhile.


Got it from a refurbished sale so I payed 1500 sek for the box, 8 GB ram and 2*2 tb disks.


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## raindog308 (Mar 2, 2014)

i have an i7 with 32GB of RAM and I built it for less than $950 last fall as I recall last fall...but I already had case, hard drives, graphics, etc.  Since it's my desktop, I don't care about disk performance and I'm usually only using a couple VMs at a time so it's just RAID-1 with an SSD for C:.

For home lab, do you really need to jump to Xeon?  I'm not sure I really needed i7 - i5 would probably have been fine.


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## blergh (Mar 2, 2014)

mikho said:


> It's hidden away in the attic so I can't easily access it but I never need hands on it.
> 
> 
> Counting backwards I guess it is a G6 or possible G5, had it for awhile.
> ...


I suppose that's a good deal then, roughly 5000 SEK get's me either an E3 or an i5 with 2x120GB EVO's



raindog308 said:


> i have an i7 with 32GB of RAM and I built it for less than $950 last fall as I recall last fall...but I already had case, hard drives, graphics, etc.  Since it's my desktop, I don't care about disk performance and I'm usually only using a couple VMs at a time so it's just RAID-1 with an SSD for C:.
> 
> For home lab, do you really need to jump to Xeon?  I'm not sure I really needed i7 - i5 would probably have been fine.


Yeah, i have an E3 as a desktop - Not sure i'd really need that for my personal virt-stuff, unless they go down in price (They are more or less the same price as a mid/high-end i5 atm tho)


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