recommended hardware for 64bit desktop

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would anyone like to share any recommendations for a 64bit rig?

main purpose would be to run vmworkstation with guests including:

2008 windows (64 bit) server
2010 exchange server
windows 7 clients.

thanks peeps!

 

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A decent quad core CPU and a motherboard that can take shed loads of ram.

Alternatively I would perhaps look at running 2008 R2 server (with Hyper-V) instead, as it's a type 1 hypervisor you're going to get better performance from it compared to VM workstation which is a type 2 hypervisor.

 

This - but I'd replace Hyper-V with ESXi or - if you buy a rig that isn't on the whitebox HCL - XenServer

 

The thing with Win 2008 is that it can still be used as a desktop if required, with ESXi obviously you can't (and would require an additional machine to have the vsphere client installed on it).

 

The ML110 G6 x3430 are pretty cool

 

That's true - though I'm guessing this is going to be used purely as a lab environment. If you want to use it as a workstation as well, then I'd still use VMWare server over workstation as it's free and, provided you don't use the sh***y v2.0 (hunt down 1.x instead) it runs really well. I ran our colo on three old Poweredges running VMWare Server 1.2 for two years

 

Thanks for all the pointers here guys.
It's going to be used as a desktop otherwise I would probably go down the ml route with esx. Found a VMWare guide for hardware and notice the processors listed are all amd (apart from 1). I'll keep you posted.
Thanks again

 

You can get Xeon and i7s CPUs pretty cheap now which will handle 2008 etc no problem. If you go for a decent motherboard I'd recommend Gigabyte UD7 or Asus Rampage formula 3 with 12GB corsair RAM.

If you can afford get a couple of SSD drives for the OS and a 3 SATA drives for data and you will have a weapon on your desk

 

Get the ML anyway, there is nothing stopping you using that as a desktop, if you needed to you could always change the graphics card (assuming you game). Failing that the ML will do just fine for running 2008 R2 and acting as your normal desktop (just find out the maximum ram that it takes).

Alternatively have a look at the Lenovo TS200's, they take up to 24gb of ram (DDR3 ECC) and are an excellent virtualisation platform (I am about to install a couple with ESXi and Hyper-V in the not too distant future).