So I went YOLO and have a Xeon E3-1241v3 server, and a X99 5930k gaming rig i mean "work station"
what should I do with them? ideally I want to learn something cool, I was thinking of setting up the E3 as a VM file server, seed box, dev server and throw a bunch of VMs to let my friends remote into for their dev work.
now for my X99 system, is just an over glorified gaming machine right now, what should I do with it?
You could do folding or seti @home with it.
It will transcoded video like a boss. I use handbreak with my 5820k an it is a champ.
Hell you could mine etherium crypto currency with it too.
For fun you could set it up to do a multi headed gaming setup.
Learn 3D modeling?
You are limited by your imagination.
3D modeling would be neat, multi headed gaming setup? is that kinda similar to Linuses 6 gaming PCs in one sort of deal?
also no to folding and crypto mining, waste of electricity from my end.
You just spent over 2k in hardware, is electricity that big of a deal?
Yeah their many routes you could go. KVM, Xen there is also some multi head gaming software for Windows too. This is a bit of a rabbit hole to go down.
that seems neat.
and problem is fan noise, mainly and because of two 390x's the CPU takes a while to cool down past 40c
You keep your PC in your bedroom?
There is a ton of stuff you can do with that proc.
Video editing and streaming are totally doable too.
yea my friend has suggested streaming since I already have a AT2020 with a shock mount and pop filter.
Problem with crypto mining is once you've learnt how to setup the mining client you basically leave it running 24/7 and with just 2 CPUs available you won't see much return anyway. Ethereum needs multiple GPUs again running 24/7 and that gets boring and annoying quickly in your home!
The Xeon would be good for a NAS and hosting VMs as you mention. 5930K gaming, transcoding, editing etc.
I was running Sophos UTM (more friendly than pfsense) on my 5820K in a Win10 Hyper-V VM for a few weeks and didn't notice an impact on the system.
what software do you recomend for nas? this is a Z97-A with an array of hardrive and I don't want it to be "just" nas so no freeNas
And I am rendering YouTube videos on FM2 platform...
Going in the corner in a fetal position to suck my thumb an cry now...
I had money to kill :P
oh the best part is the Xeon E3-1241v3, I paid $150 CAD for it, sold my i5 4690k for $200 and have a spare Pentium G2358 now.
Emulate a CP/M network and run a VAX phone system in your house.
I'm running XPEnology on a free dual core Xeon system with ~5TB of drives. XPenology has a few apps like Plex that can be installed for streaming plus again a bit more friendly once installed than some of the Linux/freebsd distributions. For VMs as well then I guess look at unRaid which I played with for a while.
the last thing I want to note, is that the Xeon desktop has a GPU and I want to use it as a bedroom PC as well so I can play my nightly match of Dota 2 after I finish coding up my next cool app that will sell for zabillions of nerd bucks.
In that case you can run all sorts of VMs in Hyper V Client, VMWare Player/Workstation, VBOX etc. on top of windows 10. NAS storage can be a bit contentious from a VM, not necessarily recommended for integrity, but doable.
I've now got a Zotac Nano (passive cooled 4 core Braswell) that runs the Sophos UTM software router in Hyper V client which handles 76 mbs fibre broadband no problem plus Connectify wireless AP software for the house. Plus I use it to primarily browse the net rather than fire up the X99 system. Not quite powerful enough for gaming, though it'll probably do Minecraft well enough but averages 9W power usage so can run quetly 24/7 on it's shelf :)
I'm thinking of a 4 bay DAS enclosure for the Zotac nano as well to make the Xeon redundant.
I currently have Ubuntu running because I got tired of fighting with Fedora to get Video drivers to work.
do you recommend WMware or Vbox?
Get Cinema4d or Maya or 3ds max and have fun :)
I tend to be bias towards VMWare most of the time but I've run it for quite a few years at work on HP servers using ESXi. Only used VBOX on Windows based PCs but at least it free unlike VMWare Workstation whcih might just have that one feature not present in Player when you want it.