CPU for VM Heavy Build.

[Zer0BL2]

So basically I'm going to be building my Grandpa a new PC for his work (he works from home) and he usually runs a lot of Virtual Machines at once. I can't decide wether it should have a Ryzen 7 or an i9 for the CPU. AMD is known for their productivity but the Intel i9 series have better throughput. What CPU would you recommend for this build and why?

[Enderman]

A 9900K is better than every ryzen CPU in terms of both multithreaded and single threaded performance.

AMD is only "known for their productivity" because you can get 8 core 16 thread for cheap.

But that comes at a cost of core performance.

[Billy Pilgrim]

3 minutes ago, Zer0BL2 said:

So basically I'm going to be building my Grandpa a new PC for his work (he works from home) and he usually runs a lot of Virtual Machines at once. I can't decide wether it should have a Ryzen 7 or an i9 for the CPU. AMD is known for their productivity but the Intel i9 series have better throughput. What CPU would you recommend for this build and why?

 

1 minute ago, Enderman said:

A 9900K is better than every ryzen CPU in terms of both multithreaded and single threaded performance.

AMD is only "known for their productivity" because you can get 8 core 16 thread for cheap.

But that comes at a cost of core performance.

Just to play a sort of devils advocate you might want to also think about future proofing. It seems as if Zen 2 will be on par with the 9900k and if you want PCIe thoughput PCIe 4.0 will help. Also because the 2700x is cheeper you could invest the difference in storage if you are on a budget.

[Razor Blade]

Depends on a lot of factors...For example, does he want ECC support on his server? If so, you would have to step up to Xeon on Intel. Ryzen will support ECC but IMHO I wouldn't go with R7 if I were building an AMD server (as a home user) I would opt for threadripper. More lanes and more cores.

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, Billy Pilgrim said:

It seems as if Zen 2 will be on par with the 9900k 

That's what people said when ryzen was first announced lol.

[Zer0BL2]

1 minute ago, Razor Blade said:

Depends on a lot of factors...For example, does he want ECC support on his server? If so, you would have to step up to Xeon on Intel. Ryzen will support ECC but IMHO I wouldn't go with R7 if I were building an AMD server (as a home user) I would opt for threadripper. More lanes and more cores.

It won't actually be a server, it will be his normal PC as well. He just wants to be able to run more VM's, more efficiently, while still being able to use it as an every day PC.

[Billy Pilgrim]

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

That's what people said when ryzen was first announced lol.

Touche, but this time we did see benchmarks.

[Eastman51]

I would get him 32GB of RAM. CPU shouldn't matter too much, both are 8c, 8th. Both will be great for VMs, and the 32GB of RAM would really help him have decent amounts of RAM per VM. 

I'd almost say just go with whatever is cheaper

[Enderman]

3 minutes ago, Billy Pilgrim said:

Touche, but this time we did see benchmarks.

Where...?

Hopefully you're not talking about the stuff form AMD themselves.

[Zer0BL2]

3 minutes ago, Eastman51 said:

I would get him 32GB of RAM. CPU shouldn't matter too much, both are 8c, 8th. Both will be great for VMs, and the 32GB of RAM would really help him have decent amounts of RAM per VM. 

I'd almost say just go with whatever is cheaper

I plan on 64GB

[r2724r16]

12 minutes ago, Billy Pilgrim said:

It seems as if Zen 2 will be on par with the 9900k

That's just speculation. Just because it SEEMs like Zen 2 will be on par with the 9900K, it doesn't mean that it will.

17 minutes ago, Zer0BL2 said:

What CPU would you recommend for this build and why?

The 9900K is better than the 2700x in every single way, except in terms of value. If you have the budget for a 9900K, it's the obvious choice.

[Razor Blade]

17 minutes ago, Zer0BL2 said:

It won't actually be a server, it will be his normal PC as well. He just wants to be able to run more VM's, more efficiently, while still being able to use it as an every day PC.

Cool! Well as someone who runs VMs on a Ryzen system I can say that the limiting factor is how much RAM I have...not CPU.

 

Truly I don't know what his needs are so I can't really recommend one CPU. If he needs PCIe lanes, threadripper 1950x is about the same price as an i9 9900k but has 4 times the amount of PCIe lanes available. If he needs more speed and single thread performance, hard to beat that i9-9900k. But in the case of Ryzen 7? It isn't fair to compare R7 to an i9 in terms of performance IMO.

[Zer0BL2]

On 1/19/2019 at 3:55 PM, Razor Blade said:

Cool! Well as someone who runs VMs on a Ryzen system I can say that the limiting factor is how much RAM I have...not CPU.

 

Truly I don't know what his needs are so I can't really recommend one CPU. If he needs PCIe lanes, threadripper 1950x is about the same price as an i9 9900k but has 4 times the amount of PCIe lanes available. If he needs more speed and single thread performance, hard to beat that i9-9900k. But in the case of Ryzen 7? It isn't fair to compare R7 to an i9 in terms of performance IMO.

Ok I think I'll go with the threadripper then, cause single core performance isn't what he needs, he needs the pcie lanes. Thanks for the advice.

[DogKnight]

When I built a PC for this purpose I went with the 7820x at the time. The HEDT X299 platform often has more RAM slots and supports higher limits than the general consumer range. And RAM is a big thing for VM usage. 

 

If I was to do it today, I would be looking at threadripper or the i9 9940x.