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i3, i5 or i7

T

ThreeEyedFish

n00b
Joined
Nov 7, 2013
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Hi everybody,

I'm thinking of building a box to mess arround with virtualization. I got some mini-itx parts laying arround here, I'm just not sure about the processor that I should buy. I'm a total noob, so it will be for testing and practicing at first, but who know's I'll actually may find a use for this at home, right. Is an i7 overkill or is even an i5 overkill and should I go for an i3 ?

Thanks in advance for enlightening me :)
 
Depends on your needs.

- i3 offers support for ECC (secure RAM)
- i5 offers support for vt-d (Hardware pass-through, needed for ex for storage virtualisation)

- i7 is more for high-end gaming not server use, use a Xeon instead as it offers ECC + vt-d but mostly only on server boards
- prefer a server chipset with intel nics for virtualisation (I prefer SuperMicro)

- there are itx boards around that can be used but if you can go uATX you have more choices at a lower price with much more features.

Intel is clever!
A virtualisation server is mostly not CPU limited but feature or RAM limited.
 
I'd say it depends what you plan to use it for.

I know for one of my VMs I plan to use Win7+Blue Iris + 6 Cameras to start, and more later... I'd imagine with an i3 I'd be limited to this VM and maybe 1 or 2 other small ones running linuxOS of some sort.

I can't imagine an i3 being good for 2+ VMs of Windows... it "WILL" work, but "good"... not too sure about that :)

Keep an eye on the for sale area here, I know myself and others have some server-stuff very affordable.
 
I have Xeon, i7, and i5 systems in my lab. None of them have a CPU issue.

The more concerning limitations are RAM and storage IOPS. Use SSD's and lots of RAM.

As said above, the use cases will dictate what you really need in processing strength. My first virtual setup was i5, 16gb RAM, and SSD. It could run plenty of things just fine.
 
Thanks for all the help guys. I dug arround on the forum some more and decided to go with these:

Mobo: Asrock E3C226D2I mini-ITX server board
Mem: Crucial 16GB DDR3L 1600MT/s ECC Server Memory
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1241v3

I allready have a Samsung 500GB SSD, a Silverstone ST45SF-G and my white Ncase M1. I didn't order a cpu cooler though, so I hope the stock cooler isn't too loud.

Thanks again for all the info :)
 
It will be nearly silent most of the time :) Gotta love the new intels.
 
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