What CPU to Spin up a Few Virtual Machines Comfortably?

m0tyrider on 26/04/2021 - 13:00

Currently have an i5-4460, GTX 770 with 16gb of ram, this thing is unuseable when I want to spin up some virtual machines (Windows 10/Server vm's)

Have been eyeing off some of the 3600 cpu/motherboard deals but the boards suck and only have 1x m.2 slot and about 4 sata ports.

On the tightest budget possible, hoping for just a ram/cpu/mobo combo to get away with it, would consider a full pc build if the value is there though.

What do you guys think?

No real plan to upgrade the gpu at this point, 770 runs most games I play fine.

Computing Computer Component CPU

Comments

  • scrimshaw on 26/04/2021 - 13:31
    +1

    but the boards suck and only have 1x m.2 slot and about 4 sata ports.

    you're looking at the wrong chipset maybe? You might have looked at the outdated mid-range B450 chipset which is going to be limited in terms of PCIE lanes. You can look at the Chipset comparison table here to see the max number of SATA / m.2 NVME it supports

    • m0tyrider on 26/04/2021 - 13:35

      I was just looking at the $299 shopping express combo . Has the 3600 with a cheap gigabyte board

      • Gumster on 26/04/2021 - 15:12

        3600 are worth around $270-$300 so they are bundling it with old dead stock to entice you there

  • bazingaa on 26/04/2021 - 13:49
    +1

    what is your current storage ? is it SSD? also are you using Hyper-V or something other than that.
    I used to run some server VMs on an i5-2500 comfortablly with Hyper-V. I found that there was a drastic performance difference in Hyper-V and something like VirtualBox.

    • m0tyrider on 26/04/2021 - 14:11

      I am running the vm's off my nvme ssd (was using a regular hdd and it was painfully slowwwww), using virtual box. The cpu useage is quite high and it just feels very sluggish.

      Wasn't aware you could run hyper v on Windows 10! I might give that a go.

      • NatoTomato on 26/04/2021 - 14:55
        +1

        only on pro and up edition

      • bazingaa on 26/04/2021 - 17:08

        Hyper-V is a Type 1 hypervisior not like VirtualBox which is a Type 2 one. You can use Win10 pro and up or free Hyper-V server 2019. I haven't used the latter but I found this tutorial.

  • FoxJump on 26/04/2021 - 15:06

    I can do 3 VMS comfy on a 4 "core" processor using VirtualBox. If you have more VMS than cores then it will show down terribly

    • m0tyrider on 26/04/2021 - 15:07

      What processor do you have? I never remembered my computer being so bad at doing virtual machines…

      • FoxJump on 26/04/2021 - 15:08

        I can't remember. Its a 7th Gen Intel i5 nuc from memory but I cannot remember the actual processor.

        I don't do much in each VM either. Basically just testing an app against differing versions of ms office

  • AndyC1 on 26/04/2021 - 17:32

    Sounds like your setup is not configured correctly. You need to give more details on your setup so people can help, like the following:
    - Host OS & patch level
    - Virtual app & version along with any add ons
    - HDD setup (multiple or single and speed/type)
    - Guest OS Versions and patch levels
    - Guest apps on the Guest OS.
    - Are you mapping any resources into the VM's (Sound, USB, Serial Ports, Volumes)
    - How have you configured the network linking the VM's?

    And the big one why are you using a i5 with 16GB setup to do netops or devops or dev on? There may be better options, for example instead of spinning up a Windows Guest for MSSQL it is quicker to use a Linux (alpine if you can find it) Docker MSSQL image as it uses less resources and is easy to cinfigure and upgrade etc, BUT it is not the same, but for 90% of dev or testing it is okay.

  • m0tyrider on 28/04/2021 - 10:54

    Ended up using Hyper-V on my Win10 install, it is working great!!

    Gone from basically unusable with virtual box to a pretty good experience with Hyper-V, however i still have an issue if I want to listen to music while working (youtube/spotify) it will glitz/stutter during heavy cpu load tasks :(

    I don't think there is a way to fix that without an upgrade?

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