Comments on: Building a Workstation for SQL Server 2014 Development and Testing

By: Glenn Berry

Glenn Berry — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 21:38:00 +0000

In reply to vim mahadevan. Some place like Micro Center would have their house brand desktop PCs, where you could pick one with comparable specs.

By: vim mahadevan

vim mahadevan — Wed, 10 Sep 2014 21:00:13 +0000

great article, very helpful. just curious if you have any thoughts on where we could just buy a full unit. effectively pay more but have some do the dirty work of assembling it.

thanks,

hobbyist vim

By: Glenn Berry

Glenn Berry — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 14:54:26 +0000

In reply to Michael Stoop.

That depends on whether you plan on doing lots of virtualization or not. It also depends on the raw performance of your I/O subsystem. For example, if someone wants to run several concurrent VMs on a workstation with limited I/O performance (such as a single 7200rpm SATA hard drive), the limited raw performance of the I/O subsystem itself, rather than a lack of VT-d support will be the bottleneck. If you are going to have one or more fast SSDs for your VMs, and you are going to do heavy virtualization, then a processor with VT-d support would be a good idea.

The other reason why I usually recommend the K version processors is because Micro Center usually only offers their processor and motherboard combos with the K version processors. On the other hand, the non-K version processors are sometimes (but not always) slightly less expensive than the K version processors, by themselves.

It is also a little more difficult to find Q87 chipset-based motherboards compared to Z87 chipset-based motherboards. You typically have to go mail-order to find them.

By: Michael Stoop

Michael Stoop — Mon, 17 Mar 2014 07:33:52 +0000

I’d steer clear of the K versions because these don’t support vt-d in virtualizations. They’re positioned mostly towards the gaming community and only provide minimal advantages in speed, even with an i5-4570, which is about half the price.
With the same logic, I’d get my hands on a Q87 chipset over a Z87, because it allows some more flexibility for a lab environment with it’s virtualization options as well as easy remote control with vPro.