this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Homelab

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Hello, i'm very tight on money, i'm looking to expand my homelab

Use case is virtualization for productivity/gaming/AI workloads

I've been looking at a few xeon v4 cpus, like the 2660 v4 or the 2680 v4, both should work fine for 2-4 VMs running off it. Some servers for example are the Dell R730 which could fit 2 GPUs or preferably custom boards with the X99 chipsets.

Prices available in my region for a (used) Dell r730 machine range between 900-1000$, including 64gb ram and dual Xeon 2603/2620 v4 cpus, while a consumer system with (used parts) i7 10900k (or the AMD equivalent) and 64gb ram costs 500-800$

Are these xeon machines worth buying long-term (4-5 years)? I've been also looking at consumer options, but I'm not sure of the main differences between both consumer vs enterprise machines

"EPYC"-based machines are not available in my location, neither ebay/amazon, so i'm very limited in options, what should I pick? A Xeon v4 machine or a AMD/Intel consumer system?

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Until win10 becomes eol they are still a solid choice. There are tricks to get win11 to install on older cpus but that’s totally a call you have to weigh and make.