Hey hyjinx!
On Wed, 24 Sep 2025 22:26:54 +1200, you wrote:
I went to the shop today to get advice. It was weird being a 'computer
guy' and asking for help! It was great to hear your advice being
somewhat similar to the dude in the computer shop.
Great! That means I still /kinda/ know what I'm talking about! ;)
Here's the 'Bill of materials' he presented me with when all told:
AMD Ryzen 9 9900X 12 Core 24 Thread Max Boost 5.6GHz $792
ASUS TUF B650EM-E mATX Motherboard $299
G.Skill Flare X5 64GB DDR5 RAM Kit 2x 32GB 6000MT/S $460
SAMSUNG 990 Pro 1TB M.2 NVMe 7450MB/s Read 6900 Write $246 (x2 drives)
MSI MAG 750W PSU 80 PLUS Gold $178
CORSAIR NAUTILUS Water cooling w/RS120 FANS $160
ASUS Dual NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 OC 8GB GDDR7 $642
NZXT H3 MicroTower Gaming Case GPU Support to 377mm $134
BEQUIET 120MM PWM Case Fan $57
TOTAL $3135
In USA money that's $1937 bucks. Here was the thought process:
Honestly, I'm not going to nit pick brands and whatnot, but that was pretty dang sound advice, for the price. That machine should last you EASILY 5+ years before you'd even think about wanting to upgrade anything (notice I didn't say /need/ there, as the need probably wouldn't be for more like 10 years), and at that point, it may just be a newer GPU, or more hard drive space.
CPU & RAM:
Since the speed of the VM's is going to be the main thing that's of importance, I thought it's probably where I should shove all the money
in this build. If you think either of this is overkill, I'd be super grateful to hear your opinion. $3135 is a lot of money to me, but I'd
rather be right than wrong. I have 32GB on my mac at the moment. It generally doesn't get filled up (but sometimes not far off), but I'm not running any VMs on that, and it generally runs web browsers and email. I have no idea whether the CPU is overkill or not, but the guys in the
shop told me I should really go Ryzen 9. One said Ryzen 7 'could' be
okay. :). The Ryzen 9 they specced is $792. They alternative Ryzen 7
they suggested was a 9800X3D at $644 and the top end Ryzen 9 alternative
was a 9900X3D $1140. None of this makes /much/ sense to me. I understand threads and cores in principal, but not in how the operating system
actually effectively uses them. When I last looked, a lot of apps still
ran on 1 core, 1 thread because they were coded that way.
Honestly, I don't think anything is overkill as long as it fits in your budget. If someone wants an NVidia 5090 for like 3 grand USD, go for it. That will just never be me. ;)
I still am not sure what you're trying to do with the VMs, though. Do you want a full host OS for every day use, while running multiple VMs in something that runs on the host OS? Or do you want to run a full fledged hypervisor as the host OS, and run a bunch of VMs under it?
The former I'm not very familiar with, except for running Virtualbox on my Windows 11 machine to test out new distros or whatever (even GUI ones like Linux Mint, etc), but then I'm not running them 24/7 either, only when I want to mess about in one of them, then I shut them down. My higher end machine I keep for gaming, and then I have an tower server with lower end specs for all my VM stuff.
Motherboard:
I know very little about motherboards these days.
Most motherboards are fine. Asus, Gigabyte, Asrock, MSI etc.. all good as far as I'm aware. I want to say Asrock had some issues for a bit (which may have been involved with the latest Intel CPUs that had issues, too), but they're probably gone by now. I personally have a Gigabyte Auros motherboard, as well as an Auros GPU, and have had no issues whatsoever. I've also had Asus motherboards in the past. I had one fail on me but it was still under warranty - got it replaced and the replacement lasted many years.
Hard drive(s):
Hard drives are getting cheaper and cheaper these days, and you can add a bunch of them, if you need to.
PSU, CPU Cooling, Case & Case Fan:
I deliberately told them to go light on the specs here and that I wanted
a quiet fan system. He ideally wanted me to go with a >$200 air cooling
CPU fan, but I was like ... >$200 for a fan.. no way! So he said 'Water cooling it is'. Water cooling is a whole new thing to me! They are RS120 Fans, whatever that means. At $137, I still consider this expensive! The case is $100.. I guess it is what it is. He said it was nice and not
cheapy, it was metal with a glass window. It supports 170mm CPU coolers
and 377mm GPUs. It has 4x PCI slo support, 280 mm radiator?! Front I/O w
1x USB, 1x USBC, HD & Audio.
Yeah, the radiator comes with the "AIO" or All In One CPU water cooler. From where the fan would normally mount on top of the CPU, two water lines run to a radiator mounted by your exhaust fans (RS120s). :)
I'd imagine that would be plenty, and if you have issues with things getting warm, add more fans. Just make sure you have a good flow. I have 7 fans on my gaming PC, with a water cooler/radiator as well. The three front fans take air into the case, and the top three and rear one are for exhaust.
Graphics:
The RTX 5060 8GB at $558 - is this overkill? They are selling a Gigabyte 3050 OC with 6GB DDR6 at $370, and as you say, your 3050 is running 'all
the games'. But has 12GB, so I guess 6GB is a little low on the RAM? I
don't really fully understand how VRAM above, say, 128MB really works.
What is it for, apart from throwing masses of pixels at - everything on
the desktop only surely needs a very small amount of RAM. As you can
tell, my understanding of graphics technology is very far away from
current day.
Right now mine is running any game just fine. But in a year, it may not. The card is already 5 years old. At this point it's up in the air how much longer it will keep running /newer/ games, as "minimum requirements" for such games is getting higher and higher. I guess the same could be said about your video editing and whatnot.
The 5xxx series is the latest, so it will probably last you much longer than a 3xxx series will, so consider that in the difference in price, too. That's completely up to you, though.
Did the guy at the computer shop give any headway as to if the 3xxx series GPU would be 'good enough' for what you wanted to do? I'm not much in the know of video editing or what hardware it requires, unfortunately. If the older GPU easily covers your video editing, and you aren't running the latest and greatest games, Then saving the $200 may be worth it. Would the guy at the computer shop even be willing to put a 5 year old GPU in that machine, though.. and still offer you the same warranty? I don't know...
I can't imagine much in the way of gaming. I barely have time to log on
to my own bloody BBS, far less play games! But I have a selection of
games in Steam that I've never been able to play, none I'm sure high-end
but I'd like to be able to play one some time or another. My main
concern is whether the VM technology can pass the GPU over properly so
that it can use it effectively. Back in the day, Virtualbox etc would
give the VM's some basic-as Intel 128MB 2D style or basic 3D graphics
card emulation. It wouldn't run games. So I'm wondering if I used VMWare
or QEMU/KVM whether that would do the trick, or whether the VM's would
still be in the swamp, despite having a good GPU and CPU on the host.
I've never used VMs for gaming, to be honest.. so I wouldn't know the answer to that. I did specifically choose to keep my gaming/every day use machine separate from my server machine, though. Granted, my "server" machine is hosting 2-3 VMs for BBS/FTN related tasks and a fourth for tinkering with FreeBSD (all command line driven), so it's nothing really worth bragging about. ;)
Regards,
Nick
... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
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