New computer for Virtualization and Gaming

Hey guys,

Finally getting a new desktop yeahhhhhhh .

Its mainly for learning virtualization, cloudstack, openstack and gaming. I ll be installing xenserver and need some 5-6 vms running on it. Thats why needed more cores and went with AMD. Will overclock the cpu to 4.5Ghz.
Please comment and suggest on the specs. The total cost is 615$ already max budget. I'm in India.

Processor - AMD 3.5 GHz AM3 FX 8320
Motherboard - ASRock 970 Extreme 4 (or) Extreme 3? 20$ difference.
Cooler - Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO
PSU - Cooler Master Thunder 600 Watts
Ram - Corsair Vengeance DDR3 8 GB
Cabinet - Cooler Master Elite 431 Plus Mid Tower
Harddisk - Seagate barracuda 1 Tb

No need for a graphic card coz will be doing remote access for most of the time (Will swap my amd 7770 from current desktop when gaming).

What OS do you plan on running on the virtual machines and what are they going to be doing? When running VMs the total RAM requirements will be that needed for the host plus the sum of the needs of each running client. The host will need 4GB to obtain decent performance and that won't leave much for the clients. You may need more RAM.

logicearth said:

The AMD process is not the best choice for running multiple VMs, it may supposedly have "more" cores, but they are better defined as half cores. The 8-core AMD processor is more akin to a 4-core intel processor. You might have trouble running 5-6 VMs at one time. That is all I'm going to say on that.

Now it is way out of your price range, but something in the Sandy/Ivy-Bridge-E line of Intel processors with their six cores are built with virtualization applications in mind.

Yes logicearth I understand that even some Intel i5's could beat this cpu in gaming and per core performance. I couldn't afford i7's as they start @315 $ for the i7-950 here in India LOL thats half of my entire budget. Doesn't overclocking help here? Also I'm not aware of the limitations in overclocking related to the frequencies of ram/mobo/processor. Is this set fine for overclocking to 4.5+ Ghz?

LMiller7 said:

What OS do you plan on running on the virtual machines and what are they going to be doing? When running VMs the total RAM requirements will be that needed for the host plus the sum of the needs of each running client. The host will need 4GB to obtain decent performance and that won't leave much for the clients. You may need more RAM.

Sorry for not being clear. Will get another 8 GB stick next month.

Base Os will be Xenserver or Centos with xen kernel/Kvm. Will be in need of atleast 4 vms which will running 1 centos and remaining xen servers. Adding these vms to the cloudstack as hypervisors. Wont be creating much vms from cloudstack. Its generally for learning the cloud architecture rather than creating vms inside the cloud. Hope I'm not confusing

Will be booting windows 8 from another disk while gaming. :)

One more question, Is there any problem coz of no onboard graphics? (will be using remote access)

Thanks for the reply.

Got the Rig guys. Thanks for the support.

Amd FX 8320
Giagabyte 990xa Ud3
Corsair 8gb vengeance
Cooler master k380 cabinet
Cooler master hyper 412 slim
Corsair gs600W
Seagate baracuda 1 Tb