Need a new PC for running VMs and Gaming

Hi all,

i need a new rig as my current Opty 148 is not up to the strain any longer. Although it had a very good innings....

My requirements are for a full build (minus case and psu) with a monitor preferably 24", in addition i have i some specific requirements for hard drives, outlined below:

1 hd for Operating Systems (i multiboot)
2 x quick hd in raid 0 for games and VMs
1 x big/slo hd for storage

I had considered even buying a pc...as im not sure if its any cheaper building your own still. Although those own brand Dell motherboards put me off a bit!

I have around £1400 to play with although ideally id like to pay less....

I had been looking at Yorkfields / Phenoms II as i tend to buy the older generation CPUs at release of a new generation in the hope of bagging a bargain.

Time frame, i was going to buy around the end of march but i would wait if there is something good coming out or a big price break!!

cheers guys!! :rockon2:

Cpu - Q6600 or Q9450 both are excellent cpu's and have the built in hardware acceleration for vm's (software permiting)


Motherboard - biostar tpower45 or asus p5q-e both boards can take upto 16gb of ram so this would probably be useful if you running multiple vm's though you don't have to run that right away.


Hdd - for the raid0 array i would be tempted to say use the 1tb Wd re2's but they cost £40 more than ther non-raid versions either these or Samsung 1TB F1's both are extreamy fast and capable drives. i would be tempted to say that your having 4 drives in the system to go for 4 1tb drive and have them all connected to the intel ich with a raid 10 array however a different operating system might not see the raid drives and this will cause problems

Graphics wise i would choose either a Nvidia Gtx260 or a ATI radeon 4870

I also should add id be intrested in Overclocking whatever chip i get would, have more than 4 gb of RAM say... 4 x 2gb hinder my overclocking?

Having 4 slots populated can make make it more difficult to hit the higher overclocks, depends on how far you wanted to push it.
But you'd probaly find that if running multiple vm's, as alsenior suggested, more ram would be of more benefit to you.

Cpu - I think the q6600 is a wee dated now, hows about a phenom II / q9550 or even an i7 920? Do they have equally efficent VM instructions?

RAM - I will likely want to get to 8gb eventually. Although i was budgeting on 2x2gb intially, also i have not seen 2x4gb kits available.

Is there a board combo ram brand i can get that will cope with have 4 slots filled and pushing to a moderatley high overclock?

HDD - is it a possible to explain the performance difference when buying a raid enabled HD, i have never heard of special raid hard drives. I didnt think there needed to be special raid enabled hard drives?

There's no real performance increase, merely that the disks are designed to be run 24/7

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blop

Cpu - I think the q6600 is a wee dated now, hows about a phenom II / q9550 or even an i7 920? Do they have equally efficent VM instructions?

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A Phenom II will do the job nicely. As would a Q9550, the Q6600 is still *very* apt however, at a very nice price point. i7 is simply too much money. The CPU, motherboard, and ram for an i7 box could build you a complete Q6600 box.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blop

RAM - I will likely want to get to 8gb eventually. Although i was budgeting on 2x2gb intially, also i have not seen 2x4gb kits available.

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Why not get 8GB now?.. It's silly cheap. Just get 4x2GB sticks.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blop

Is there a board combo ram brand i can get that will cope with have 4 slots filled and pushing to a moderatley high overclock?

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Don't bother with overclocking, it just burns out components with little real world returns. A decent machine will deal with all the VM'ing and gaming you want.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by blop

HDD - is it a possible to explain the performance difference when buying a raid enabled HD, i have never heard of special raid hard drives. I didnt think there needed to be special raid enabled hard drives?

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'RAID Edition' hard drives just have better quality spinals and barrings which makes them more robust against many years of 24/7 operation abuse, and some extra data consistency checks. However I have been running 'ordinary' hard drives 27/7 for years as well, and I've yet to have any of my Western Digital disks die, or throw out bad sectors. It's one of those cost/benefit things you need to think about.

more like raid edition drives leave error corection to the raid controller, as regular drives can hang a raid array by trying to correct the error themselves while the controller waits for the drive to respond

aidanjt: I have not seen people urge not to overclock cpus stating that it "burns" them out since the DX-66 days....clock speeds dont kill chips, heat and volts do!

On the raid issue...is the onboard RAID that comes with most mid to highend motherboards ok? Or is a dedicated SATA raid card advisable.

On the CPU front i did have a very tasty spec from KustomPCs that suggested the i7 920 but i sense some new models coming out and new steppings of both the i7s and the AMD AM3 chips. So im gonna hold fire till March.