Building a virtualisation rig

[redtomato]

Hello InsanelyMac, my first time posting on here so let me know if I've posted it in the wrong place.

 

I'm building a new rig, partly for a hackingtosh, and partly to study for my MCITP qualification (same as the MSCE for Windows Server 2008). I'm being sponsored to study for this so it's quite urgent.

 

The main use of this will be for virtualisation, virtualisation and more virtualisation. It needs to run in VM at the same time a minimum of:

 

Windows Server 2008, Server 2003, Windows 7 and Vista.

 

(The Server 2008 is the AD domain controller and the 2003 is the Terminal Services host, running a WAN.) I also want it to be as hackintosh compatible as possible, and to use reasonably little power, and be reasonably cheap as I have 2 kids to pay for.

 

Specs so far are:

 

Chassis: A Powermac B+W chassis that I have lying about and will mod for this. A new chassis is also possible.

Drives: 3x 320GB 7200rpm SATA that I have left over from an old project.

Graphics: none or onboard. Will remote login from my main computer - an Apple MacBook.

Monitor: none. If one becomes necessary in future, may get an Dell 2009WA - we have one at work and I like it muchly.

 

Mobo: up to you.

CPU: up to you.

RAM: a bunch of 2GB sticks, minimum 8GB. I have 4 GB on my MacBook which chokes when running Server2008 in a VM. It would be foolish to get a PC with less than twice this.

 

Not really interested in overclocking. I underclocked an old home server to save power.

 

I am looking at i7-860 as it is new, cheap, speedy, and low-powered. But the mobos for it only seem to have 4 RAM slots which isn't really enough for hardcore virtualisation. 6 or more would be better.

 

That seems to indicate the i7-920, but it's more expensive, older, and uses more power. I am also slightly confused by which chips have virtualisation microcode and which don't.

 

Any advice? I'm willing to spend a bit more more to make it more hackingtosh compatible, but cheapness, low power and above all, virtualisation strength are still the main aims.

 

Many thanks

 

RedTomato