Desktop & ESXi Build Review

WAP - Ubiquiti Unifi AP AC

Let me explain a little about each group...

Let's start with Desktop first.

I do a fair amount of programming, web designing, etc. I primarily use my PC for Gaming, and I've just recently picked up encoding as a side project. I encode Anime for Project-GXS. The goal is high quality, with low file sizes. thus the ridiculous hardware. Plus, I don't know when I'll be able to upgrade my computer in the future. I'm switching jobs, and I'm not sure how life will change.

ESXi Server is next!

This is my Lab Environment. If push comes to shove, I'll buy a second one for all of my learning. I have a lot I want to do, and I want to learn as much as I can. I've shifted my gears a bit, and dropped my Bachelors. I'm focusing more on security, but still want a background in Programming/Networking. The lab will host a variety of different things, Windows 2008 / 2012, a variety of Linux Servers, and possibly Unix. I also chose the case due to its stacking ability. If I can build a few of them, that'd be some insane machines.

Network

I don't know a ton about networking, but sc302 has set his hooks into me, and challenged me to learn a fair bit about it. I'm looking at taking my Cisco CCNA test this winter. I like to be in control, and I've noticed my family has been a little too "open" with things when it comes to wireless access, and our local internet. I just recently found out my brother had setup a PC in the garage, and was running torrents for all his friends. Also had some sketchy pictures on it too. An array of nude pictures from 18 to 23 year old girls he knows, including his girlfriend (I puked at those..). Needless to say, I've been a lazy Network Admin. Also, I'll be networking my house with female connectors. Each room will have 1 - 2, depending on the size. i.e. Living room 2, Master Bedroom 2, Dining room 1, Bedrooms 1, Kitchen 1, My Bedroom 4, Laundry room 1, and garage will have the rest (My Lab).

Now, review, my fellow IT Minions, REVIEW! Challenge me!

P.S. Sorry if the wrong location,

17,746 · May 2, 2015

Don't get Seagate HDDs, I've heard too many horror stories.

31,906 · May 2, 2015

Dude I have heard so many horror stories about drive brand XYZ.... Really?? Can we please get over the nonsense about this brand of drive sucks.. Its so freaking done.. Every single maker of drives drives will FAIL, period end of story..

Chevy's Suck, Fords Suck, Jap cars suck -- this whole favorite brand thing is just so pointless.. Seagate is one of the MAJOR players on the planet for drives.. But yeah they suck Really?

Billy will come in next and say WD suck.. Susan will think Hitachi's are the worst, nothing but problems with them, etc...

The drive is a whole $89 and comes with a 2 year warranty.. Will it last 2 years? That is what the maker says and backs up with a warranty.. If so he got his moneys worth.. Because you know what in 6months 6TB will be 89$, etc.. And then might last way longer.. Or maybe it will fail in 2 weeks? That can be said for every single maker of drive out there.. For every user that likes abc, another user will like xyz and hate abc.. I can see liking a specific sports team over another.. Cubs over the Sox any day of the week for example - people that like the Sox are just idiots for example.. You know that cubs win is so much sweeter if the sox loose the same day, etc.. This is known fact But when it comes to buying something - which one gives me the best bang for the buck is where its at - not what freaking brand sticker is on the thing.

Here is a couple seagate's I have that are way past their prime - still going strong.. More than my money's worth on them, etc..

If you don't like that drive model because it doesn't perform as well as drive abc, or feature X is missing in that model - this model is better.. Great that is topic worth discussion - but that brand blows is just so pointless..

edit: you want something to point out to BD.. How about that the desktop disk he wants to get is $680.. Come on really?? Did you win the lottery? Per our PMs you don't eat lamb because its expensive But hey lets drop $700 on a disk.. Which is more than the MB and CPU combined.. Come on dude really?? What power supply are you going to use for these systems? Let me guess something that can do 3000Watts and light up your house?

And while I have the unifi AC myself.. And very happy with it -- Its price point is a bit high for someone that doesn't even have any AC clients? Also ac wave 2 is coming.. I really would not suggest you spend that kind of coin on your AP.. Maybe the pro would be better choice.. I got it and I thought the price point was a bit high for home - and pretty sure my disposable cash budget is a bit higher than yours.. I eat lamb quite often and think nothing of it for example But its my hobby and wanted to play with AC.. I don't even have any clients - had to buy some AC usb and pci card for my pc, etc.

Your in school, while you might be making some ok money for just starting out, etc. And hey its your money - I don't think that level of AP is really at the right price point for you.. Not after seeing the nonsense you were running for wifi before.. You don't have to move to a Ferrari when you were driving a yugo before.. There are lots of good choices between that might be better suited price point. Same goes for the sg300, do you really need the 20 port version? Do you have anywhere close to 20 wired devices? The sg300-10 is 100$ cheaper.. While that doesn't seem like a bad price for the 20 port model, do you really need 20 ports? What are you going to connect to it? You need 4 ports in your bedroom for example.. Your PC has 1 nic, what else in your bedroom needs a wired connection? Printer maybe?

4,276 · May 2, 2015

Do you really need a hexacore i7 in that server? By the VMs that you want to run, I think you'd get by on a Pentium.

You can put together a decent server (minus disks) for less than the price of that processor.

31,906 · May 2, 2015

^ exactly dude you seem to be looking at Audi A8's when you should prob be looking more at a hyundai elantra or sonata..

11,030 · May 2, 2015

^ exactly dude you seem to be looking at Audi A8's when you should prob be looking more at a hyundai elantra or sonata..

I've been looking at A8's haha!

2,685 · May 2, 2015

Don't get Seagate HDDs, I've heard too many horror stories.

It's luck based bro. I used to only buy WD, because Seagate did have a bumpy time for awhile, but at work, we're rollin' Enterprise level of the same drives. If its bad, or dies within the next 3 months, I can replace it. It's 70$ only.

Dude I have heard so many horror stories about drive brand XYZ.... Really?? Can we please get over the nonsense about this brand of drive sucks.. Its so freaking done.. Every single maker of drives drives will FAIL, period end of story..

Chevy's Suck, Fords Suck, Jap cars suck -- this whole favorite brand thing is just so pointless.. Seagate is one of the MAJOR players on the planet for drives.. But yeah they suck Really?

Billy will come in next and say WD suck.. Susan will think Hitachi's are the worst, nothing but problems with them, etc...

The drive is a whole $89 and comes with a 2 year warranty.. Will it last 2 years? That is what the maker says and backs up with a warranty.. If so he got his moneys worth.. Because you know what in 6months 6TB will be 89$, etc.. And then might last way longer.. Or maybe it will fail in 2 weeks? That can be said for every single maker of drive out there.. For every user that likes abc, another user will like xyz and hate abc.. I can see liking a specific sports team over another.. Cubs over the Sox any day of the week for example - people that like the Sox are just idiots for example.. You know that cubs win is so much sweeter if the sox loose the same day, etc.. This is known fact But when it comes to buying something - which one gives me the best bang for the buck is where its at - not what freaking brand sticker is on the thing.

drives.png

Here is a couple seagate's I have that are way past their prime - still going strong.. More than my money's worth on them, etc..

If you don't like that drive model because it doesn't perform as well as drive abc, or feature X is missing in that model - this model is better.. Great that is topic worth discussion - but that brand blows is just so pointless..

edit: you want something to point out to BD.. How about that the desktop disk he wants to get is $680.. Come on really?? Did you win the lottery? Per our PMs you don't eat lamb because its expensive But hey lets drop $700 on a disk.. Which is more than the MB and CPU combined.. Come on dude really?? What power supply are you going to use for these systems? Let me guess something that can do 3000Watts and light up your house?

And while I have the unifi AC myself.. And very happy with it -- Its price point is a bit high for someone that doesn't even have any AC clients? Also ac wave 2 is coming.. I really would not suggest you spend that kind of coin on your AP.. Maybe the pro would be better choice.. I got it and I thought the price point was a bit high for home - and pretty sure my disposable cash budget is a bit higher than yours.. I eat lamb quite often and think nothing of it for example But its my hobby and wanted to play with AC.. I don't even have any clients - had to buy some AC usb and pci card for my pc, etc.

Your in school, while you might be making some ok money for just starting out, etc. And hey its your money - I don't think that level of AP is really at the right price point for you.. Not after seeing the nonsense you were running for wifi before.. You don't have to move to a Ferrari when you were driving a yugo before.. There are lots of good choices between that might be better suited price point. Same goes for the sg300, do you really need the 20 port version? Do you have anywhere close to 20 wired devices? The sg300-10 is 100$ cheaper.. While that doesn't seem like a bad price for the 20 port model, do you really need 20 ports? What are you going to connect to it? You need 4 ports in your bedroom for example.. Your PC has 1 nic, what else in your bedroom needs a wired connection? Printer maybe?

That drive is optional. Intel just released a new one, but it's sold out, similar speeds for less the price. I figured you read the post where I said I have a new job, I'm switching from CSC to Addison Group, 10,000$ raise in wage. I told you, my PSU will be the 1300W as soon as I send it in. If I don't use it, it'll be something around 800w, maybe 1k tops. I don't think I'll need 1k, but who knows?

Intel 750 Series SSDPEDMW400G401 - This is the drive I was looking at using, over the G.Skill.

Do you really need a hexacore i7 in that server? By the VMs that you want to run, I think you'd get by on a Pentium.

You can put together a decent server (minus disks) for less than the price of that processor.

Well, I'm building for the future. BudMan and I talked a lot about this, and I could go with a QC instead of a HC, but I might as well build it a bit overboard, give room for the future.

^ exactly dude you seem to be looking at Audi A8's when you should prob be looking more at a hyundai elantra or sonata..

I don't fit in Hyundai's, Audi maybe. Curse the giant size. =/ Doesn't help that I'm fat too

3,981 · May 2, 2015

Sorry for the bashing but that server setup is rather ridiculous; you will need lots of RAM for the multitude of tests and VMs but that's about it. The SSD and the high end CPU is pretty non sense, you can get ESXi booting from a SD card or USB pendrive; heck one of my lab servers is a AMD Phenom II with 6 cores but with a ton of RAM and i build it for less then 600

2,685 · May 2, 2015

Sorry for the bashing but that server setup is rather ridiculous; you will need lots of RAM for the multitude of tests and VMs but that's about it. The SSD and the high end CPU is pretty non sense, you can get ESXi booting from a SD card or USB pendrive; heck one of my lab servers is a AMD Phenom II with 6 cores but with a ton of RAM and i build it for less then 600

10,893 · May 2, 2015

64GB of RAM for a small lab is rediculous.

I've got a HP DL160 G6, dual quad core 2.4GHz xeons and 48GB RAM - that's running 8 VMs, and the CPU usage is usually around 200MHz pretty much ALL the time unless I start compiling a package. About 30GB of my RAM is used, for 8 VMs (mix of linux/windows). I set the BIOS to maximum power saving (ironic to think servers have such a setting).

Unless you're going to be renting out VMs or servers or whatnot, what you want is completely overkill.

8,699 · May 2, 2015

Sorry for the bashing but that server setup is rather ridiculous; you will need lots of RAM for the multitude of tests and VMs but that's about it. The SSD and the high end CPU is pretty non sense, you can get ESXi booting from a SD card or USB pendrive; heck one of my lab servers is a AMD Phenom II with 6 cores but with a ton of RAM and i build it for less then 600

May 2, 2015

You will need some good NICs in your ESXi server. Also, don't bother with a hardware firewall, pfSense is far better than that TPlink and perfectly suited to your ESXi box.

For reference, below is my ESXi server.

As for the components you've listed. Definitely avoid the Crucial MX series. Awful firmware and a lot of problems with them.

https://www.google.co.uk/#q=crucial+mx100+bsod

I'd go with Supermicro instead of MSI motherboards.

Hard disks, yes, as others have stated, avoid Seagate and go WD for HDD, and Samsung 850 (Pro) or SM951 for SSD.

ESXi 6.0 box:

1x Lian Li PC-V2130 case (holds 15x 3.5" + 4x SSDs) - PC-V2130B

1x Supermicro X10DRi-T motherboard (DP and 2x Intel10GbE) - MBD-X10DRi-T

1x Antec HCP1300 Platinum PSU (Platinum rated and quiet!) - HCP1300 Platinum

2x Crucial 32GB (16GB x2) CL15 DDR4-2133 ECC 1.2V - CT2C16G4RFD4213

2x Intel Xeon E5-2620V3 6 Core CPU - BX80644E52620V3

2x Noctua NH-U12DX i4 heatsink/fan (Narrow ILM) - NH-U12DX i4

1x LSI 8 Port 6Gbps MegaRAID SAS 9261-8i with BBU (from previous server) - LSI00212

1x LSI 8 Port 6Gbps MegaRAID SAS 9271-8i (from previous server) - LSI00331

1x Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX 40mm fan (for LSI RAID card) - NF-A4x10 FLX

1x Samsung 850 Pro 512GB SSD

2x Intel I350-T4V2 4-port Ethernet Server Adapter (from previous servers) - I350T4V2BLK

1x Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate G3 32GB USB 3.0 (ESXi boot disk) - DTU30G3/32GB

3x Lian Li HD-07A hard drive trays - HD-07A

1x Akasa Siliconized Rubber Fan Pins - 20 Pack (to silence rear fan) - AK-MX003

2x Powercool 20cm Male molex 4pin to 4x SATA Power Braided Cable - Black - M4XSATA

2x Noctua NF-S12A PWM Case Fan 120 mm (to replace noisy Lian Li rear case fans) - NF-S12A

1x Akasa AK-CBUB19-10BK USB 3.0 to USB 2.0 Adapter Cable - AK-CBUB19-10BK

1x Startech 6 inch USB A Female to USB Motherboard 4-Pin Header USB 2.0 Cable (to plug in ESXi boot disk inside case) - USBMBADAPT

May 2, 2015

Oh, and as for an ESXi boot disk, just use a good USB 3.0 flash drive with fast read/write speeds, 16GB or larger. Bear in mind that ESXi 6.0 will only boot from USB 2.0 ports so USB 3.0 is not essential. Read/Write speeds more so.

May 2, 2015

Finally, if you really want to go with the Ubiquity AP I'd recommend getting the PoE version of the Cisco SG300 switch in order to power it over ethernet.

Personally I'd stick to a Netgear R7000 in AP mode, or even an R8000 if you have a lot of devices. Plenty good enough and very stable as of the last few firmware revisions.

3,981 · May 3, 2015

Desktop needs absurd memory for encoding? I don't know what you're encoding, memory isn't an issue. With just 4GB, I use about 2GB just for encoding. It's the CPU that handles all of the encoding. Least that's how it was explained to me. Another thing, power means very little to me. Why? Because I live between 2 hydro-electric dams, and pay 3 cents per Kw. My monthly bill is less than 150$ a month.

As for the network, you don't seem to fully understand what I'm doing. I have 2 XBOX 360s, 2 XBOX 1s, 4x PCs, I chose 20 over 10 simply because I don't know whose going to come over to our house and play XBOX with my brother or whose computer I'm going to have to work on. You question my build based off knowing nothing, you assumed I didn't know what I was buying.

Posting this seemed like a great idea, but I'm regretting it now. I asked for a review of the hardware, what I could potentially downgrade, or swap out. Not to be badgered about it.

Video encoding is very CPU and RAM dependent: the more the better. And depending on the software, you may need more or less RAM, it really depends on the software used; still 16GB of RAM is plenty enough. And power should matter because running a high demanding CPU software will require your CPU to be consuming high, not low. Yes, those Intel CPUs are pretty smart and will throttle just to give the enough, but when encoding you might find that they will not throttle at all, thus be very consuming.

And lastly, i didn't assumed anything; i just provided some inputs but then again you did provide very few info as well.

4,832 · May 3, 2015

As for the components you've listed. Definitely avoid the Crucial MX series. Awful firmware and a lot of problems with them.

https://www.google.co.uk/#q=crucial+mx100+bsod

I bought over 250 of those MX100s for work and not one issue so far. Been a year or so. After the 840 EVO issues, not sure I'd recommend Samsung. I have an 840 Pro and like it but we bought many 840 EVOs and do see slowness in those after a while.

May 3, 2015

Yes, I agree the 840 EVOs have problems also, and Samsung have finally resolved those issues with the firmware update released last week, albeit a somewhat brute-force method of addressing it. It does finally fix it however.

Samsung learnt a lesson there and won't be repeating it. In fact the 850 EVOs have moved up to a larger process and implemented 3D to prevent such cell degradation occurring.

I cannot say the same for Crucial's M550 and MX100 drives as per the link in my previous post. But that's a conversation for another thread

4,276 · May 3, 2015

Well, I'm building for the future. BudMan and I talked a lot about this, and I could go with a QC instead of a HC, but I might as well build it a bit overboard, give room for the future.

If you think you need massively powerful hardware for virtualisation, you are somewhat missing the point of virtualisation. My 'server' spends most of its time running at about 200Mhz of utlilisation. It has a dual core processor and comfortably will run about 10 virtual machines - the roadblock I hit with running more is not so much processor, but RAM (I only have 16GB).

My 'server' has a processor that isn't much more powerful than the sort of Atom processors you find in modern tablets.

Ultimately it is your money, to spend as you wish.... seems like you have plenty of it to be buying this for a lab...

3,981 · May 3, 2015

Yes, I agree the 840 EVOs have problems also, and Samsung have finally resolved those issues with the firmware update released last week, albeit a somewhat brute-force method of addressing it. It does finally fix it however.

Samsung learnt a lesson there and won't be repeating it. In fact the 850 EVOs have moved up to a larger process and implemented 3D to prevent such cell degradation occurring.

I cannot say the same for Crucial's M550 and MX100 drives as per the link in my previous post. But that's a conversation for another thread

i've bought 25 of the MX100 (128GB version) and still i haven't had a single issue; latest firmware was being applied as well.

also about the HDD controversy: i have (and had) lot's of HDD from different brands, some don't even exist today (Maxtor, Quantum, IBM). They all died after they past their due time, so i'm not a brand loyal because every brand works. As a matter of fact, i had a couple of 3TB Seagate HDDs and guess what? they work great and are very cheap (everything is backed up elsewhere so there's no danger of losing data if a disk dies).

31,906 · May 3, 2015

Yeah I remember quantum -- shoot funny you mention those names... Here I pulled just those names off my shelf.. Gawd I need to throw some of this ###### out

That maxtor was made in 97, the IBM in 98.. Shoot have drives on my shelves older than some of the kiddies here on neowin

But some of these would still work.. I have couple of that are marked bad.. But other just put on my self when I retired them - prob still ok some of them.. Other than WTF you do with a 3GB drive? When I have 32GB thumb drives I carry around

Yup we are in agreement.. All drives die Brand is of little meaning if you ask me..

3,531 · May 3, 2015

only thing i would add on what all the other guys have said is i would have dual or triple NIC's and break the vmkern out onto one of its own

3,981 · May 3, 2015

Yeah I remember quantum -- shoot funny you mention those names... Here I pulled just those names off my shelf.. Gawd I need to throw some of this ###### out

That maxtor was made in 97, the IBM in 98.. Shoot have drives on my shelves older than some of the kiddies here on neowin

olddrives.jpg

But some of these would still work.. I have couple of that are marked bad.. But other just put on my self when I retired them - prob still ok some of them.. Other than WTF you do with a 3GB drive? When I have 32GB thumb drives I carry around

Yup we are in agreement.. All drives die Brand is of little meaning if you ask me..

now that was a walk into memory lane

My IBM HDD died less than a year and was completely unexpected.. it was a 40GB drive back in 1999, if not mistaken; back then IBM storage were top notch and quite expensive but suddenly several problems plagued those drives and IBM went out of business (in storage, anyway) in 2000 or 2001. So it was a big player that went south and a lesson to everyone: even the big ones can die.

The Quantum i had back in 1996 (2GB drive): it lasted until 1999 when i replaced it for a IBM Desktstar

Also i had several Toshiba 2,5" HDDs as well Samsung and they all die on me: all the models were from laptops so severe abuse was administered to those poor disks.

the lesson in here is: backups, backups, backups! Because everything dies.

May 3, 2015

i would advise gettin a xeon on that platform since they will preform better then a i7 tbh

6,915 · May 3, 2015

Oh, and as for an ESXi boot disk, just use a good USB 3.0 flash drive with fast read/write speeds, 16GB or larger. Bear in mind that ESXi 6.0 will only boot from USB 2.0 ports so USB 3.0 is not essential. Read/Write speeds more so.

Drive speed isn't all that important. ESXi will run everything from RAM once it boots.

4,228 · May 4, 2015

My 2cents. I have Intel 4690s, quad core at 3.2GHZ (upto 3.9Ghz) using 65watt (and yes thats not all the time) Running my Server2012 with 6 Hyper-V VMs and is also my Steam InHome Streaming Server (with the help of my GTX750Ti Video Card). I have a 256GB SSD for VM - OS (10-30gb each) and HD Drive for Data VHDX. Have 16GB of memory. Recommand you get MEMORY and Storage Space. SSD is great but for Lab work get a HD. i7 will not help with anything so i think the i5 is your best bet. And nothing everything needs lots of memory and cpu. Most of mine are single core with 1-2GB memory, and some of my linux are just 512MB (TImeMachine). Also visit Reddit.com/r/homelab some great help there.

i would advise gettin a xeon on that platform since they will preform better then a i7 tbh

IF the motherboard supports all the xeon features.

If you think you need massively powerful hardware for virtualisation, you are somewhat missing the point of virtualisation. My 'server' spends most of its time running at about 200Mhz of utlilisation. It has a dual core processor and comfortably will run about 10 virtual machines - the roadblock I hit with running more is not so much processor, but RAM (I only have 16GB).

My 'server' has a processor that isn't much more powerful than the sort of Atom processors you find in modern tablets.

Ultimately it is your money, to spend as you wish.... seems like you have plenty of it to be buying this for a lab...

I guess it comes down to what you are doing. Most of my VMs are doing number but having the power of quad core for Steam InHome Streaming helps me alot.

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