Oracle Virtual Box & Memory Upgrade

[Beorn_Bear]

I currently use an i7-3770 at my main computer. It has 16 GB DDR3 RAM at 1333 Mhz. I am planning on using Oracle Virtualbox in order to create Virtual Machine for Linux Mint and Window 2016 Server. However, I am concerned about memory constraints. My system only have a maximum capacity of 32 GB. Are there any reccommendations for purchasings refurbished RAM in Canada?! Will there be any significant performance difference between 16 GB DDR3 at 1333 mhz vs 32 GB DDR3 at 1600 mhz?! 

[DeadnightWarrior]

How much would you pay refurbished RAM?
I don't know if it would be worth it, considering you could buy a new 16Gb DDR3 2x8 kit like this Timetec one for 75.99 CDN$, this Silicon Power one for 74.99 CDN$ or this Patriot one for 81.99 CDN$.

 

Performance difference between 1333 and 1600 is negligible at best so you shouldn't have to worry about that.

For VMs I think you really need lots of RAM so 32Gb is good (you could assign 12Gb to Win2016 Server, 6Gb to Mint and still have 14Gb for your main OS) but you'd also have to think about how many CPU cores you need to give each VM. The i7 3770 has 4 cores / 8 threads so there aren't that many available... You could assign 4 threads to each VM and not run them simultaneously but if you want to use them both at the same time you should consider upgrading to a more modern platform and get at least a 6c/12t CPU.

Just my 2 cents anyways

[Beorn_Bear]

For the moment, I do not have a budget to purchase a new machine. I currently have 4 sticks of 4 GB RAM. I am researching the cost of refurbished RAM as I will need 4 x 8 GB sticks of RAM. I appreciate your comments. 

[Aragorn-]

9 hours ago, DeadnightWarrior said:

You could assign 4 threads to each VM and not run them simultaneously but if you want to use them both at the same time you should consider upgrading to a more modern platform and get at least a 6c/12t CPU.

you can assign all four cores to all the VM's and run them all at once if you like. The hypervisor will just deal with it, and the performance is shared out.

[DeadnightWarrior]

On 1/26/2021 at 6:16 PM, Aragorn- said:

you can assign all four cores to all the VM's and run them all at once if you like. The hypervisor will just deal with it, and the performance is shared out.

Yeah but one of the VMs would be Win Server, I'm no server expert but I guess it wouldn't like limited resources.
I mean, I tried running Win10 in a Virtualbox VM with 2 cores / 4Gb assigned and it would be barely usable, I can't even imagine how badly Win Server would run.
But I repeat, I'm no server expert and I might be wrong.

[Beorn_Bear]

With Oracle Virtualbox, it is seems at dedicated 4 GB RAM and 4 cores works reasonably well on my I7-3770. However, due to memory limitations, it is not possible to run more than one virtual machine at the same time. I am still looking into options for refurbished 32 GB DDR3 RAM.