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Virtualisation upgrade

B

BSDMan

Weaksauce
Joined
May 23, 2012
Messages
105
Hi

My current machine is approaching the 6 year mark and although it's still going pretty well it could do with an upgrade considering how much I use it for my work and studies.

Currently I have:

  • Intel i7 3770 3.4ghz with BeQuiet BK017 CPU cooler
  • 32GB DDR3 1600mhz (4 x 8GB)
  • Asus P8Z77-V Deluxe motherboard
  • Samsung 850 Pro SATA SSD 256GB (boot drive)
  • Samsung 950 Pro NVMe SSD 256GB (virtual machines)
  • 3 x old school spinning disk SATA drives ranging from 2TB to 6TB
  • Fractal Design Define R4 case
  • BeQuiet 850W PSU

This machine has been absolutely fantastic and I use it every single day and (touch wood and all that) it has been rock solid but I'm finding that with all the virtualisation I do with VMware Workstation Pro for work and my studies that I sometimes run out of resources.

I'm also finding that 4k videos sometime stutter or drop frames so I have ordered an EVGA GeForce GTX 1050 video card so I don't have to use the onboard Intel HD4000 anymore.

Things sure have changed since I bought the above system with AMD coming out with some killer CPU options!! Considering that I will be using the machine for email, internet, virtualisation and watching 4K videos is AMD a good choice? It absolutely must work with Windows 10 and VMware Workstation Pro 14. I'm still trying to decide if I should go Ryzen or Threadripper? AMD or Intel?

I was thinking of the following for a Ryzen setup:

  • Ryzen 7 Eight Core 1800X 4.00GHz
  • Asus ROG Crosshair VI Hero AMD X370
  • Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB)
Could I reuse my BeQuiet CPU cooler with the Ryzen with a bracket maybe? Or do I need a new CPU cooler?

I haven't decided on a budget yet but the above costs about £800. I'll be reusing my current drives so no need for new ones. Same goes for my dual screens.

A Threadripper setup is more expensive (obviously) as is the Intel i9 platform so I'm wondering if its worth spending the extra considering that I will use it mainly for virtualisation?

I can easily bottleneck my current setup when I spin up a test nested vSphere environment (maxes out all 4 cores on the CPU sometimes) and although the RAM usage can get high I think 32GB is fine for now but upgrading to 64GB later on is a nice option to have.

Booting off the M2 NVMe drive I have is a must!

Look forward to any advice or comments ;)

Edit: I'm looking to upgrade in the next 6 months and I don't overclock or game
 
Vengeance LPX is Hynix chips. Often those must be run slower on Ryzen/Promontory so get RAM with Samsung B die. X4xx chipsets will improve memory compatability, how much, don't know. I believe there is an AM4 bracket for your Be quiet.
 
gigaxtreme1 said:
Vengeance LPX is Hynix chips. Often those must be run slower on Ryzen/Promontory so get RAM with Samsung B die. X4xx chipsets will improve memory compatability, how much, don't know. I believe there is an AM4 bracket for your Be quiet.
Click to expand...

Check the motherboard's hardware compatibility list, my LPX 3000 has been running at rated speed (2933) since around 2-3 months after Ryzen launch. The HWCL was accurate wrt to speed the ram would run and they'd update for almost every bios, so at least for Asus as long as your ram is listed on the HWCL and is listed at the speed you want to run it at (or is rated at), you should be fine.

Only thing is that you may want to wait until April for the Ryzen refresh, but the main benefit will be if you want a little more clock speed and want to run lots of really fast (>3200mhz) ram.

As to the virtualization and which platform, can't make any kind of recommendation without knowing what you're running on the virtualized machines.
 
Last edited:
bobzdar said:
Check the motherboard's hardware compatibility list, my LPX 3000 has been running at rated speed (2933) since around 2-3 months after Ryzen launch. The HWCL was accurate wrt to speed the ram would run and they'd update for almost every bios, so at least for Asus as long as your ram is listed on the HWCL and is listed at the speed you want to run it at (or is rated at), you should be fine.

Only thing is that you may want to wait until April for the Ryzen refresh, but the main benefit will be if you want a little more clock speed and want to run lots of really fast (>3200mhz) ram.

As to the virtualization and which platform, can't make any kind of recommendation without knowing what you're running on the virtualized machines.
Click to expand...
Yeah, my ripjaws v runs above its rated speed of 2800cl16 with tighter timings (Hynix m-dye @2933cl14-15-15), just depends on the motherboard and cpu you have.
 
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