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?
You can get a dual Xeon Gold Thinkstation P920 with 512gb RAM for that price and your ears will thank you later.
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.
Still using Xeon-E5 v3/4 CPUs in production. No issues.
These xeons have ok performance for multi-core, just dont expect competitive single core performance or the overall eff of a 10900k.
I have a 2660 V4. Great CPU.
