Hello, i’m very tight on money, i’m looking to expand my homelab

Use case is virtualization for productivity/gaming/AI workloads

I’ve been looking at a few xeon v4 cpus, like the 2660 v4 or the 2680 v4, both should work fine for 2-4 VMs running off it. Some servers for example are the Dell R730 which could fit 2 GPUs or preferably custom boards with the X99 chipsets.

Prices available in my region for a (used) Dell r730 machine range between 900-1000$, including 64gb ram and dual Xeon 2603/2620 v4 cpus, while a consumer system with (used parts) i7 10900k (or the AMD equivalent) and 64gb ram costs 500-800$

Are these xeon machines worth buying long-term (4-5 years)? I’ve been also looking at consumer options, but I’m not sure of the main differences between both consumer vs enterprise machines

“EPYC”-based machines are not available in my location, neither ebay/amazon, so i’m very limited in options, what should I pick? A Xeon v4 machine or a AMD/Intel consumer system?

  • PM_pics_of_your_roof@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Until win10 becomes eol they are still a solid choice. There are tricks to get win11 to install on older cpus but that’s totally a call you have to weigh and make.

  • LookIts_Rain@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    These xeons have ok performance for multi-core, just dont expect competitive single core performance or the overall eff of a 10900k.

  • sharpfork@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    If you are talking about AI and gaming workloads you are going to need a GPU so form factor is important. I squeezed a 1050ti in my Dell R720xd for a gaming vm a few years ago and it was great but nowhere near what is needed for running simple inference on open source models. I’d consider more of a gaming rig for AI workloads. See /r/localllama

    I ended up picking up last year’s top of the line Mac Studio with 128gigs of shared memory on sale at Microcenter for ai inference workloads. I’m using its 10g onboard to connect to my R720 via sfp+ to cat 7/rj45 and dig that. I have many secondary use cases for the Mac Studio which is a pleasure to have at my desk. If I was a PC gamer, I might have gone that route.

  • Fade_to_Blah@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Im running a gaming VM on way worse hardware than v4, with NVIDIA boards in the server. Honestly this is the only way I play games, I play a mix of some modern stuff. Its surprising how well Tesla M40s I have in there perform.

  • Virtual-plex@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    You can get a dual Xeon Gold Thinkstation P920 with 512gb RAM for that price and your ears will thank you later.

  • EpicEpyc@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’ve got 8 dell r630’s, hp dl380 g9, and 2x 2u 4 node supermicro chassis all running e5 v4 CPUs in my lab. Still supported by the current build of VMware, they run great and are relatively power efficient. I do have 4 Xeon gold servers, however I havnt even fired them up because they aren’t much better than the v4’s (only v1 scalable) but I probably will eventually when VMware ups the hardware requirements.

    I don’t know where you are at, but in most countries with eBay or probably anywhere else, buy the server barebones, or with really low spec components (low ram and even v3 CPU’s) and upgrade it yourself. I find this to be a lot cheaper than buying it prebuilt with identical specs.

    For example, my dl380 g9 came with a single v3 Xeon, I bought a 12 core e5 2650 v4 for literally $4.79 shipped to my door. Flashed the new bios and I was off and running. I also can pickup as much ram as I want for ~$7 per 8gb ddr4 dimm or $12 for 16gb dimm on eBay all day long (us prices obviously but it still should be cheaper to buy low spec or barebones outside the Us and upgrade)

  • physx_rt@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’m running some gaming VMs on a Xeon E5-2699 v3. Good enough for older titles at 1080p, but the per-core performance isn’t very competitive anymore.