3 VMs 1 PC third build

[Fi2ost]

Budget 4-5k USD

Country: United States 

CS GO, Minecraft, Doom Eternal, Light photo/video editing, Fusion 360. Typical home use. I would like to run three VMs one for me and one for each of my children all VMs in same room. Unraid.

Other details I am upgrading from a Lenovo P52 Intel Xeon E-2176, 64GB Memory + Nvidia Quadro P2000. M.2 1TB + 1TB SSD Neither of my kids have PCs yet.

 

I would like to build one PC for the house hold and run three virtual machines one for myself and one for each of my children. I have built three computers in my life, 15 years ago in high school so I am a bit out of the game, but I'm confident assembly wont be an issues.  I'll have more difficulty setting up the VMs as I have no experience in that department.  I would like my kids PCs to have resources allocated like the Entry Level or Modest Gaming builds on PCPart Picker and I would like my PC to have the resources of a Magnificent or Glorious Streaming/Gaming Build.  The VMs will occasionally all be run concurrently, I expect a majority of the time I'll be the only one using the machine.  

 

I expect to purchase anywhere from 6-12 months from now.  This is a new endeavor for me and I could use some help from y'all.

 

Attached is where I am now for parts (haven't picked storage)I would like something with a decent upgrade path. I plan on running four displays, two for myself and one for each of my kids. 

 

*I would also like the VMs to boot from M.2 Storage. 

 

Edited May 21, 2022 by Fi2ost

[Origami Cactus]

Lol what is that motherboards price? Motherboards should cost max 300.

Quote

I expect to purchase anywhere from 6-12 months from now-.

Then why are we talking about it now?

Next gen Intel, AMD and Nvidia products will get released this year, they will be much faster, and more importantly, they will fit in your budget.

So looking at previous gen parts for no apparant reason is kinda a waste of time. I would get it if you wanted to build a super tight budget machine, then old parts would shine, but if you are building a 4000$ computer, might as well get the best.

 

Just for an example, AMD will release an 24core AM5 processor, which would give each of you 8 cores, instead of 4.

[Levent]

I am not sure if you can have a vGPU setup on Ampere (atleast using Proxmox) just yet. As you got 2 GPUs and 3VMs you want have KVM users on.

 

Easiest way of doing what you want is by having 3 individual gpus in one system and passing each one to each VM.

 

6-12 months is a lot in the tech world. I would say come back when you got the money.

[LIGISTX]

4 minutes ago, Fi2ost said:

Budget 4-5k USD

Country: United States 

CS GO, Minecraft, Doom Eternal, Light photo/video editing, Fusion 360. Typical home use. I would like to run three VMs one for me and one for each of my children all VMs in same room. Unraid.

Other details I am upgrading from a Lenovo P52 Intel Xeon E-2176, 64GB Memory + Nvidia Quadro P2000. Neither of my kids have PCs yet.

 

I would like to build one PC for the house hold and run three virtual machines one for myself and one for each of my children. I have built three computers in my life, 15 years ago in high school so I am a bit out of the game, but I'm confident assembly wont be an issues.  I'll have more difficulty setting up the VMs as I have no experience in that department.  I would like my kids PCs to have resources allocated like the Entry Level or Modest Gaming builds on PCPart Picker and I would like my PC to have the resources of a Magnificent or Glorious Streaming/Gaming Build.  The VMs will occasionally all be run concurrently, I expect a majority of the time I'll be the only one using the machine.  

 

I expect to purchase anywhere from 6-12 months from now.  This is a new endeavor for me and I could use some help from y'all.

 

Attached is where I am now for parts (haven't picked storage)I would like something with a decent upgrade path. I plan on running four displays, two for myself and one for each of my kids. 

 

Is there a reason you picked a 1500 dollar mobo? Motherboard means almost nothing these days, so I would go find one that is more like 180-220 bucks, assuming it has all features you need.

 

You will need a GPU per VM, unfortunately. If your kids have never had a PC, do they really need a 3070? Maybe get yourself a 3070 or 3080 and get them 2060's, because again, you will need 3 cards total. I believe nvidia is finally allowing consumer GPU's to be ran in VM's, but you still need a gpu per VM, splitting GPU isn't really like splitting CPU.

[RONOTHAN##]

4 minutes ago, Fi2ost said:

I expect to purchase anywhere from 6-12 months from now

Any recommendations on parts will be completely meaningless by then, RTX 40 series will be out, AM5 will be out, Rapter Lake will be out, Meteor Lake might even be out. 

 

Anyway, You'd be much better off just buying 3 different computers for this budget rather than trying to do it all with 1 box. You'd either need 3 different GPUs, one of which running at x4  (since it's running through the chipset, if you switch to Threadripper this isn't an issue but that's way more expensive) which hurts performance, or you'd need to do a more cloud based approach which has so many issues associated with it. This only ever makes sense if you're trying to save space, but odds are you'll be able to fit 3 smaller gaming rigs in your house no problem. 

[jaslion]

For the price of the motherboard you can already buy one of your kids an EPIC gaming computer.

 

Ok so lets start with some things first:

You in now way shape or form need that motherboard. You are overspending about 1300-1400$ on that board compared to others and it basically WILL NOT BE BETTER THAN A 200$ BOARD for 99,999% of usecases.

 

Basically this whole computer has a lot of overspent parts (case, psu, board) and multiple parts are missing.

 

Now even if you were to start with this that ryzen does not have enough threads to build 1 great gaming pc and 2 entry level ones. You need something better as just for your kids you'd lose AT LEAST 16 of your 24 threads. A 5950x would be the minimum I'd recommend but honestly you should move to a higher end platform and that just doesn't make economic sense.

 

Then also comes the fact that am4 is a dead platform with no new cpu's coming out.

 

Now for the vm part. Whilst it's WAY better now I'd still just do 3 separate systems. As you simply do not have the budget to achieve what you want in a single system.

 

Your sons systems:

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/BPHDjZ

CPU: Intel Core i5-12600 3.3 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($229.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Scythe FUMA 2 51.17 CFM CPU Cooler  ($65.98 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI MAG B660M MORTAR WIFI DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  ($159.56 @ Amazon)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($67.98 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($114.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: XFX Radeon RX 6600 8 GB Speedster SWFT 210 Video Card  ($299.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Lian Li Lancool II Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case  ($139.00 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: MSI MPG A-GF 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($81.51 @ Amazon)
Total: $1159.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-05-21 15:43 EDT-0400

 

Your system:

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/JgmHW4

CPU: Intel Core i5-12600 3.3 GHz 6-Core Processor  ($229.99 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Scythe FUMA 2 51.17 CFM CPU Cooler  ($65.98 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: MSI MAG B660M MORTAR WIFI DDR4 Micro ATX LGA1700 Motherboard  ($159.56 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws V 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  ($114.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive  ($114.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 3080 10GB LHR 10 GB VENTUS 3X PLUS OC Video Card  ($849.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Lian Li Lancool II Mesh ATX Mid Tower Case  ($139.00 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: MSI MPG A-GF 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  ($114.99 @ Amazon)
Total: $1789.49
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-05-21 15:44 EDT-0400

[Fi2ost]

I can purchase now, there is a lot I need to get caught up on.  The reason I picked that motherboard was because I saw it that three GPU slots, fast ethernet and it looked like I had a lot of room to upgrade the CPU and memory. I am guessing from the replies there is a better allocation of capital available.  I didn't know about the GPU requirement.

[Fi2ost]

4 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Now for the vm part. Whilst it's WAY better now I'd still just do 3 separate systems. As you simply do not have the budget to achieve what you want in a single system.

 

I'd really like to go down the VM path its something I want to dip my feet into, my primary goal is building a PC that can run some VMs and upgrading my machine. Even if it means adjusting my budget.

[jaslion]

9 minutes ago, Fi2ost said:

I can purchase now, there is a lot I need to get caught up on.  The reason I picked that motherboard was because I saw it that three GPU slots, fast ethernet and it looked like I had a lot of room to upgrade the CPU and memory. I am guessing from the replies there is a better allocation of capital available.  I didn't know about the GPU requirement.

The only other cpu that is better that you can get is the 5950x. A TON of board have 3x pcie 16 slots BUT there are only 24 lanes so no card will run at full speed and one will be forced to run at x4 which will have a quite noticeable impact. The board is not something you should waste your money on. I can give you plenty sub 300 boards that do this too + all the fancy features.

 

4 minutes ago, Fi2ost said:

I'd really like to go down the VM path its something I want to dip my feet into, my primary goal is building a PC that can run some VMs and upgrading my machine. Even if it means adjusting my budget.

The issue here is that right now you either spend enterprise grade levels of money (10k plus) to have something that has close to current cpu performance, spend 5k on just the cpu, board and ram to get an older threadripper and have a worse computer or do 3 systems and have good value computers.

 

The issue is that we are in a transition period from am4 to am5 and that both amd and intel have abandoned the pro consumer market for now leaving a big gap. This gap is where you need to be for this as otherwise you end up with a worse computer for a lot more money. I do not see them coming out with something pro consumer (hedt platforms) anytime soon.

 

This type of setup is doable but you need A LOT more money to do it well whilst for 5k you can give you and your kids great computers that are hassle free and later try this again.

[RONOTHAN##]

1 hour ago, Fi2ost said:

The reason I picked that motherboard was because I saw it that three GPU slots, fast ethernet and it looked like I had a lot of room to upgrade the CPU and memory.

It's more or less identical to a $250-400 like the X570 Taichi, X570 Aorus Master, regular Crosshair VIII Hero, etc. There isn't a reason to be going for a motherboard like that thinking you're really getting any more than a board like one of those

 

57 minutes ago, Fi2ost said:

I'd really like to go down the VM path its something I want to dip my feet into, my primary goal is building a PC that can run some VMs and upgrading my machine. Even if it means adjusting my budget.

The problem with the VM path is that it's just a ton of complexity and a ton of compromises. Do you want everything to be plugged straight into the machine, or do you want to do thin clients? If you want to be plugged into the machine, you need to have 3 different GPUs, and it's to the point where you start running into issues with having enough PCIe lanes for the system so you'd want to go Threadripper/EPYC, but with that you'd be losing single core performance and spending crazy amounts of money (A 16 core Threadripper Pro 3955WX is $1500 used on eBay, not even considering the cost of a motherboard, and it's slower all around than the 5950X by a decent margin). You'd be spending extra money for an experience that will be worse all around, especially because you'd also need to hook up a USB card with 2 differnet controllers on board so you can have USB hotplug support in each of the VMs. Basically, it's a bad idea. 

 

Now time for the more cloud based approach where each of your kids would have thin clients and basically remote into each of the VMs using something like Parsec. This is a bit better because depending on how you set it up, you can actually do it with 1-2 GPUs for all 3 people. If you want to do proper virtualization in Linux, you're stuck getting at least 1 20 series or earlier card instead since 30 series does not work with vGPU unlock (also, vGPU unlock is a pain to use and not recommended for the first VFIO experience you'll have). GPU-P on Windows does exist and would likely be your best solution, but GPU-P does have some noticeable performance overhead so while in a particular game a single GPU would be running at 120FPS and you'd expect that 2 systems running on that same card would result in 60 each, it'll be a bit more like 40-50 each. Plus some games just don't like to run in a VM (I believe Apex Legends will flag you for cheating if you do), and each of the VMs will have a bit of latency thanks to having to do it through the network, this will suck. 

 

Basically, no matter how you set it up, it will be a worse overall experience than doing it with 3 separate machines, even if you don't have any hiccups setting it up, which is very unlikely. It's a cool idea and if you had the hardware laying around to do it, knock yourself out, but to actually deploy it's got too many issues to really be viable without spending ungodly amounts of money.

 

EDIT: Also forgot to mention that you can get 3 rigs that are all faster than what was originally picked out for within the $5000 budget

 

Your rig: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/ws4v4s

Your kids rigs: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/22sC8r

Edited May 21, 2022 by RONOTHAN##

[Fi2ost]

I appreciate you all offing me guidance.  After a bit more consideration I decided what I really want to accomplish is building something with my kids, the devices we have now are sufficient for our current uses but having and building a NAS would be great.  I looked at the NAS form and made this parts list build on what I picked up from a few build posts.  My goal here was low cost and a generic build experience with my kids. There isn't tons of storage as I supposed I don't really need it, I'm at 50% capacity on 2TB, all of my needs are photo dumps from various sources and the odd Gopro video.  I plan on buying Unraid to scratch that itch and I think I have a decent upgrade path without losing to much investment dollars.  The CPU has no on board video, I don't need much for this machine as it will stay in a closet. Is there a rule of thumb when looking for card to just give me an input?

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/BYGYd9

 

[jaslion]

15 hours ago, Fi2ost said:

I appreciate you all offing me guidance.  After a bit more consideration I decided what I really want to accomplish is building something with my kids, the devices we have now are sufficient for our current uses but having and building a NAS would be great.  I looked at the NAS form and made this parts list build on what I picked up from a few build posts.  My goal here was low cost and a generic build experience with my kids. There isn't tons of storage as I supposed I don't really need it, I'm at 50% capacity on 2TB, all of my needs are photo dumps from various sources and the odd Gopro video.  I plan on buying Unraid to scratch that itch and I think I have a decent upgrade path without losing to much investment dollars.  The CPU has no on board video, I don't need much for this machine as it will stay in a closet. Is there a rule of thumb when looking for card to just give me an input?

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/BYGYd9

 

You really want a igpu here as the system will flat out not function otherwise. Also a boot ssd would be very nice.

 

I would also very very very very much so recommend you get a 12th gen system so if you decide to expand the system you aren't stuck on a old platform limited in corecount.

[Fi2ost]

OK. Swapped these parts out. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/BYGYd9

[Fi2ost]

I ended up going with these parts. Decided to scavenge parts from FB Market and build something I could learn with before spending a bunch of money on hardware I didn't know how to use.  I spent $200and got A i7-6700, 16 GiB of memory, one with a heat spreader cut in half, an asrock 170M, came with a corsair cm450 power supply and two drives.  Yanked a drive from an old external storage box and I think I got one more hanging around.  I've installed truNAS and am trying to build pools and get some network drives set up. I appreciate the input kept me from doing anything impulsive.  The kids and I had a great time putting all the hardware in a H510 I got for $25.  It looks goofy with the tiny ITX mobo but the case looks nice and its fun learning to use TrueNAS. Much thanks. 

[dogwitch]

honest answer. check out lvl1tech  site or craft computing on this. both are very in depth for this.

i got lucky with my TR build(dirt cheap)