Motherboard Recommendations

[gmatech]

Does anyone have recommendations for a good motherboard that supports virtualization? I purchased an ASUS motherboard a while ago that claimed to support virtualization but I never was able to get it to work. I guess I'm a bit hesitant to purchase another one without some good recommendations. I want to virtualize homeserver and perhaps media center as well.

[Guest no-control]

Need more information. AMD or Intel? What socket? IGP or GPU? Support ESXi, Hyper-V or Xen? single sockt or multi socket? Consumer or Server board? How much RAM do you want to support? All new or Rehash some old?

 

Right off the bat I'm just going to say Xeon x3430 (or some other 1156 quad core dirivitive like i5-7xx) and an H55 type board.. Refer to manf links to verify they support Vitrual (most do)

 

 

If you want AMD same thing x4 945 Denaband a Mobo that can support itwith an IGP

[mrossco]

I'm with no-control. There's a lot more to consider than just the board when thinking in terms of virualization. Definitely start with the processor before picking a board, keeping in mind what virtualization software/os you plan to run.

 

Intel kinda confused a lot of people by removing the virtualization support from its desktop CPU line and then brought it back around the same time Windows 7 launched.

[gmatech]

Need more information. AMD or Intel? What socket? IGP or GPU? Support ESXi, Hyper-V or Xen? single sockt or multi socket? Consumer or Server board? How much RAM do you want to support? All new or Rehash some old?

 

Right off the bat I'm just going to say Xeon x3430 (or some other 1156 quad core dirivitive like i5-7xx) and an H55 type board.. Refer to manf links to verify they support Vitrual (most do)

 

 

If you want AMD same thing x4 945 Denaband a Mobo that can support itwith an IGP

 

Here are some more details

 

Relatively low cost (< 750)

Intel Chip (I've seen mention of the Core I3 on the boards as being a less expensive alternative). If I go I3 I'd like the

option of upgrading the chip to I5/I7 in the future without changing MB.

IGP

Supports Hyper-V

Consumer board (lower cost?)

Supports minimum 8 MB RAM

Rehash a 500 GB drive with addition of more

 

I don't know what the diff is between single and multi socket so can't comment on which I want.

 

I want to virtualize Home Server, a Windows 2003/2008 development server (I'm a software developer) and possibly Media Center. I'll also want to use it to try out other OS on a periodic basis but not run them full time.

 

Is there anything else I should be considering?

 

Thanks for the input!

[mrossco]

That's a lot to ask of an i3. You may want to look at jumping to i5 now, or you can step back a generation and pick up a Core 2 Quad. You lose your upgrade path, but it should be able to support what you ask, and prices on the platform have been well discounted.

[Guest no-control]

Yeah i3 is really choking your options a bit as you only have 2 cores to divide out. A quad core or threaded dual core is really where to start.

[jmwills]

If the ultimate goal is to virtualize, I would go with nothing less than an i5 and possible an i7 with all the RAM you can afford.

[jcollison]

I have had fairly good results with virtualization on my Core i3 using Oracle's Virtual Box. To be fair, with the memory I have (4GB) I can really only VM one additional OS at a time. But so far so good and a Core i3 is not a bad place to start if you are just doing minimal VM.

[pcdoc]

Like Jim, I have a core i3-530 running a virtual setup with 4 gigs of RAM. It works fine for what I am doing and I am planning on upgrading to 8 gigs to provide some breathing room. In terms of CPU, as long as you have modest requirement on what you are doing you should be OK, however, I agree with no-control that if that is your "main" objective and want multi-VM's, than go with a quad core. I am only running Vail on the VM and only for beta period as I am building dedicated hardware for the released version.