Haswell build help required

[ebberz]

So now I've seen the details for IVB-E and been quite disappointed (plus cost wise it's probably better) I've decided to switch to Haswell.

I realise nothing I am running would require the use of 6 cores/12 threads however I was more interested in the amount of RAM I could chuck at the 2011 board. Portability was a factor so I was hoping to have less boxes to lug around the country with me.

As I'm going Haswell and am limited to 32GB I've bought a HP 54L and added 16GB RAM to it as a standalone ESXi server. Although I may rebuild it as the primary FreeNAS server.

I was thinking of something like the following:-

CPU:- Intel 4770 £240
Prefer a motherboard that support VT-d (e.g. Asrock Q87M Pro) although I read some Z87 chipsets support it and I'd prefer one of those.
32GB RAM :- Kingston 32GB DDR3 1600MHz HyperX Genesis XMP £220
PSU:- XFX Core Edition 750w 80+ Bronze Captive PSU £80
Boot SSD :- Samsung 840 Pro 128GB £110
VM SSD :- Crucial 512 GB M4 £280
Storage HDD :- 2TB WD Red WD20EFRX RED x2 = £170
Current case is a HAF 932, would prefer something smaller if possible.

1. What YOUR PC will be used for.

PC will be a jack of all trades.
Machine is on 24x7
Streaming films to the rest of the house using Serviio
Playing games
VMware lab (at least 12 hosts) running on VMware workstation with at least 1/2 nested esxi boxes*

2. What YOUR budget is. A price range is acceptable as long as it's not more than a 20% spread

£1500 (not including the monitor)

3. What country YOU will be buying YOUR parts from.

UK

4. IF you're buying parts OUTSIDE the US, please post a link to the vendor you'll be buying from.
www.amazon.co.uk
www.scan.co.uk
www.ebuyer.com (if they have a deal on)
www.dabs.com (if they have a deal on)

5. IF YOU have a brand preference.
Intel CPU

6. If YOU intend on using any of YOUR current parts.

No.

7. IF YOU plan on overclocking or run the system at default speeds.

Will not be overclocking

8. What resolution, not monitor size, will you be using?

Probably 1920x1080 (27")

9. WHEN do you plan to build it?

Next 2 weeks

Thanks for reading.
Regards

 

[mfenn]

Do you have any NICs or HBAs that support VT-d? Unless you have any server grade stuff laying around, it's doubtful that you don't. If you don't happen to be planning to buy said server-grade parts, VT-d is of limited usefulness to you.

That being said, the Asrock Q87M doesn't look like it's terribly expensive relative to a Z87 board. Was there a specific reason you were wanting to avoid it?

What kinds of games to you play? I don't see a GPU in the build nor are you reusing any old parts, so you'll most likely need to pick one up.

 

[ebberz]

Hi Mfenn,

I don't have any NICs / HBAs for this. I just wanted to test passing through either a GPU or one of the HDDs for testing purposes.

The Asrock Q87M doesn't appear to be widely available in the UK. None of the main retailers anyway and if I look on Amazon it's sold by a 3rd party seller in Germany. Unfortunately I don't really know any other boards that definitely support VT-d. The Z87 is supposed to and as it's higher up the range with more options that's why I was looking at it.

Games are mainly FPS, Bioshock, Dead Space, Tomb Raider, Minecraft.
I'll definitely need a GPU but was looking for suggestions, I do watch a few films directly from the PC.

Thanks

 

[ebberz]

Anyone able to give the OK on that PSU?

GPU probably something like the Sapphire 7950.

MOBO again as the Asrock Q87M is not available how about the Asrock Extreme 6 or Asus Sabretooth?

 

[mfenn]

Passing through an HDD doesn't require VT-d; that's a SCSI device that you can do a standard RDM for. You would need it to pass through a GPU. However, it seems like most consumer boards have incomplete VT-d support, so you'll want to go for a server board if you want it to work perfectly. Note that you'd need a second GPU to do this, consumer GPU's don't have SR-IOV support and thus cannot be shared between the host and the guest. To me it seems like a big investment for what is essentially a novelty.

You certainly have the budget for a server board and Xeon, but that cuts down on what you can do for the rest of the build. So, is VT-d support really that important to you? That'll determine what the base platform is.

 

[ebberz]

To be fair I'd rather not go down the Xeon / server board route.
I agree the HDD can be passed through as an RDM.

I assumed I could us the on-board graphics for the local machine and pass through the GPU to the virtual machines. To be honest it's just something I wanted to play with and based on what I've read so far and what you have suggested it's probably not worth the hassle.

So if we scratch that from the options and go with a straight 4770 / Z87 combo?
Asrock Extreme 6?

On a separate note it looks like the Fractal R4 is on offer at the moment for £73 from Amazon.

 

[mfenn]

OK, yeah dropping the VT-d requirement makes things a lot simpler.

i7 4770 £239
ASUS H87-PLUS £86 - no real need for an expensive overclocker's board
Corsair DDR3 1600 8GB x4 £216 - the Kingston you have picked out is good too
GTX 760 £192
Corsair Neutron GTX £113 - more consistent performance than the 840 Pro
Samsung 840 EVO 500GB £279 - the M4 is a pretty old controller at this point, nothing wrong with one if you already have it, but there are better options for buying now
Seagate 7200RPM 2TB x2 £137 - might as well get 7200RPM drives for less
Samsung DVD burner £14
XFX Core 550W £50 - the system will draw about half that maxed out
Fractal Design R4 £72 - great choice
Total: £1398

 

[ebberz]

Thanks mfenn.

One thing I noted about the H87 board was that is doesn't have many USB3 ports.

Never looked at the Corsair range of SSDs before as I'm a huge fan of the Samsung range.
I'll have a read up on it.

Yeah I did note on one of the power calcs that I would only be drawing about 330W.
PSU is cheaper than I normally but looks good.