I decided to do something I like to do just for the heck of it ... build a computer. The idea for this build was it was going to be used for a home lab system as a virtualization host as well as be able to support 2 to 3 GPUs for running AI models.
This set the general requirements for the build.
- Enough Memory to Support 8 or more VMs
- Enough CPU cores to support at least that many VMs
- Fast Storage (NVMe drives supporting at least two)
- Plenty of PCIe x16 (or x8) slots to support three GPUs two slot GPUs
- Large Power Supply that can support the CPU(s) and GPUs
After pricing new current gen components to fit that it totally blew away any reasonable budget (on the order of $3500 or more. That had me rethinking possibly used/recycled components and eventually I hit on some dual processor Xeon motherboards from China being an option as well as recycled Xeon CPUs and server RAM. The rest of the components were to be new with only the power supply ending up being a Chinese gaming brand that had decent reviews on Amazon.
| Component | Price | Count | Extended |
| HUANANZHI X99 F8D PLUS LGA 2011-3 XEON EATX | $ 124.00 | 1 | $ 124.00 |
| XEON E5 2667 V4 CPU PROCESSOR 8 CORE 3.2GHz | $ 25.00 | 2 | $ 50.00 |
| 32GB 2RX4 PC4-19200 (DDR4-2400) ECC RDIMM | $ 25.75 | 8 | $ 206.00 |
| Thermaltake Ceres 300 TG Black Mid Tower Chassis | $ 80.00 | 1 | $ 80.00 |
| Noctua NH-D9DX i4 3U, CPU Cooler for Intel LGA20xx | $ 60.00 | 2 | $ 120.00 |
| TEAMGROUP MP33 1TB SLC Cache 3D NAND TLC NVMe | $ 48.00 | 1 | $ 48.00 |
| MSI GAMING GeForce GT 710 1GB GDRR3 64-Bit | $ 38.00 | 1 | $ 38.00 |
| GALAX Omega GLX1200 PSU (2024) - 1200 Watt- 80+ Gold | $ 145.00 | 1 | $ 145.00 |
| $ 811.00 |
I ended up with a system that costs a quarter to a fifth the price of the what the initial cost was going to be and and the over-all performance is not far off from what I was looking for. I could swap out the CPUs for ones with more cores if I wanted to improve the number of CPUs per VM, but most seem to be fine with 2-4 CPUs and 8GB or so of RAM each and many work fine with somewhat less.
The specifications currently the following
- 256GB of ECC DDR4 RAM
- 16 Cores (32 with hyper-threading)
- 1200W Power Supply (Easily support the CPUs and at least two GPUs)
- Six PCIe x16 form factor slots (half are actually x8)
- 1TB of PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe storage (have two NVMe slots open)
The over-all build went well except that the mounting hole patter on the motherboard around the CPU area is non-standard and so left out three mounting posts and replaced them with insulating plastic stand-offs to make sure the board didn't short out against the case. There is two stickers on the RAM slots a warning in Chinese to remove the "Copper Posts" before installing the motherboard. Thanks to a YouTube creator's review of the board I was aware of the need to remove the motherboard mounting posts. The other oddness about the board is that only the two CPU fan headers are PWM and the rest are old three pin fan headers where the fans run at 100% all the time and that don't show up in any fan monitoring software I found.
Other plans for the build.
- Add more storage, another 2-4TB NVMe drive and a 12TB hard disk.
- GPU so I can run AI models at more than 5 tokens per second.
- Fan speed controller so case fans are quieter.
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