Need Sugestion for Budget Build for office uses

[Harridi]

Hi there

 

I'm thinking on creating budget multiple user one pc for office and web browsing uses with VMs. I'm targeting for 3 to 5 users.

After some research I think GT 730 is the best option for the GPU. And for the motherboard, I think ASRock - Z270 Taichi would be enough.

But, I need suggestion on CPU... How many cores should I pick? xeon or i7? Or should I change the motherboard instead?

 

Or... should I try other option instead? I've tried multiple rdp, but the quality and responsiveness is limited by how fast the client to decode the screen, even my i5 gen6 laptop can't make it feel like 'native' even I wire it with gigabit connection.

Edited May 19, 2018 by Harridi

[tdallen]

Hello -

 

When you say 3-5 users, would they be using unRAID as a file server?  Or VMs?

[Harridi]

sorry, I meant VMs...

[JonathanM]

What, exactly, do you mean by "budget?"

 

Reading between the lines, it sounds like you want a single tower to run 3 to 5 sets of monitor, keyboard, and mouse passthrough VM's. If that's what you want, I'm afraid your budget had better be rather high.

[Harridi]

13 minutes ago, jonathanm said:

What, exactly, do you mean by "budget?"

 

Reading between the lines, it sounds like you want a single tower to run 3 to 5 sets of monitor, keyboard, and mouse passthrough VM's. If that's what you want, I'm afraid your budget had better be rather high.

 

Yeah, It may be high, but I'm choosing cheap gpu only, not high end one... I'm targeting the cheapest way too build it.

 

[tdallen]

Just to be sure we are on the same page - if you want to have 5 users you will need 5 GPUs and a machine big enough to handle them... along with associated CPU and memory.  Even if you run a used E5 this still won’t be cheap.  

[John_M]

If I needed three to five office machines, that's what I'd build - identical boxes, each with its own CPU, motherboard and power supply. Forget the complexities of virtualisation and how to get five GPUs into one box? Get a processor with decent integrated graphics (a Ryzen 3 2200G is much more than adequate) and you won't need a GPU.

[JonathanM]

12 hours ago, Harridi said:

 

Yeah, It may be high, but I'm choosing cheap gpu only, not high end one... I'm targeting the cheapest way too build it.

 

The GPU's are almost the cheapest part of a build that big. A motherboard that will support 5 GPU's plus 5 USB controllers in independent IOMMU groups  is going to be $$$, and the case and power supply won't be cheap either. Pretty sure 5 individual machines will be cheaper by a good margin, probably half the cost of a rig able to run 5 hardware passthrough VM's with even close to similar performance.

[Harridi]

23 hours ago, jonathanm said:

The GPU's are almost the cheapest part of a build that big. A motherboard that will support 5 GPU's plus 5 USB controllers in independent IOMMU groups  is going to be $$$, and the case and power supply won't be cheap either. Pretty sure 5 individual machines will be cheaper by a good margin, probably half the cost of a rig able to run 5 hardware passthrough VM's with even close to similar performance.

 

On ‎5‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 11:44 PM, John_M said:

If I needed three to five office machines, that's what I'd build - identical boxes, each with its own CPU, motherboard and power supply. Forget the complexities of virtualisation and how to get five GPUs into one box? Get a processor with decent integrated graphics (a Ryzen 3 2200G is much more than adequate) and you won't need a GPU.

 

On ‎5‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 11:42 PM, tdallen said:

Just to be sure we are on the same page - if you want to have 5 users you will need 5 GPUs and a machine big enough to handle them... along with associated CPU and memory.  Even if you run a used E5 this still won’t be cheap.  

 

Thank you for the reply guys... I'll use the other ways then..

 

Cheers

[tr0910]

What you may have not considered, is that you don't need dedicated GPUs for this kind of system.  If you are willing to access the machine via RDP, all you need is internet connection.  Then machines anywhere on the same network can RDP into VM's on the server.  This is a much simpler way to use an unRaid server including VM's in an office environment.  The performance of office apps like browsing, using ms office work just as well via RDP as directly connected to a passed through GPU.  The beauty is no need to wire USB and HDMI cables all over the place.  Even wi-fi connections are useful for this.  But gigabit wired connections are best.

 

What doesn't work well is gaming, and video streaming is still watchable, but not quite as good. 

 

What you need is a laptop and an RDP client.  There are also thin clients.

[JonathanM]

25 minutes ago, tr0910 said:

If you are willing to access the machine via RDP,

 

On 5/19/2018 at 5:43 AM, Harridi said:

I've tried multiple rdp, but the quality and responsiveness is limited by how fast the client to decode the screen, even my i5 gen6 laptop can't make it feel like 'native' even I wire it with gigabit connection.