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Bare minimum Sandy Bridge processor for basic Server 2008 r2 build

M

mmaestro

Member
Hi all. I'm looking at building a bare-bones, cheap as you can make it server for home mostly for testing/learning purposes. Currently the plan is to run Server 2008 r2 on there, use it as a Domain Controller, and have some clients again mostly for testing purposes running in Hyper-V on there (yes, I know, everyone says ESXi is better, but Hyper-V is more useful to me to learn for work purposes right now). I'm thinking of a basic H67 board, 8gb memory, but the question is processor. I'm happy with something anemic for the time being on the assumption that when Ivy comes out, I'll put my current 2600K in there and get an Ivy proc for my desktop, then probably make an H61 build for the kitchen for music and video. The question is, what's the bare minimum processor I can get away with both for the current server plan, and for the kitchen when I move the processor out? I'd been thinking an i3 2105, but could I get away with a Sandy Pentium? Celeron, even? The less I spend the better, right now.
 
Any of those would run ESXi or Hyper-V just fine, but I'd stay away from Celeron products just because selling it will be more difficult. People won't care that it is Sandy Bridge, they just know it says Celeron. The Sandy Pentium like the G620 is a good choice for around 60 bucks, but a better choice will be the i3 or i5 label, for retaining resale value. The i3 2100 or i5 2300 would be my choice if you are close to a Microcenter, otherwise, buying the Celeron or Pentium may end up being a throwaway purchase.
 
My g620 is a WHS 2011 champ, transcoding and everything, even stuck at it base frequency of 1.6 Ghz... something is up with my Z68 board and that's all the faster it runs but it has been great. $70 @ Microcenter 🙂 Personally, I would stick with the 3MB cache for the VMs. VMs love cache.

For convertsations sake, I did put a i3-2100 in my esxi box, no qualms about that at all, it idles along most of the time.
 
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