Assembled Desktop Recommendation

[mitesh.agrwl]

Hi,

Need a new desktop which could also support as server for networking labs. Too much confused between AMD and Intel. The budget is not too much $280-$300.

[mastablasta]

low budget. maybe a used machine with Core i3 or i5? if new, then choices are quite limited - one of the new pentiums would be the only choice i guess. then add more ram if needed. unless you want to go with the miniPC, but that one doesn't have much power. also investigate what kind of server you need. perhaps something like a RaspberryPi might be a solution?

not sure how good is to have desktop and server in the same box. you might want to investigate virtual machines (they mostly only need ram, but for server a 2 GB extra for a virtual machine might be more than enough).

i still run WinXP on the old box (AMD single core CPU) . it is using a PAE kernel to utilize the 4GB ram. anyway i can easilly run a web server or two in virtualbox on it. for testing purposes it is more than enough. if i had more ram (8GB) and more cores (so you could give one core to the server) it would fly.

[mitesh.agrwl]

i am thinking of installing an hypervizor to run desktop and server. the server will be used for personal reasons and run for few hours only. a study server for doing networking labs which may involve GNS3, eve-ng and open stack, but will not use the three together. i will need more than 8 gb ram for labs but will upgrade it later. I am more concerned about a good motherboard-processor combination which may become a bottleneck in long run, rest can be upgraded later.