MB for hosting VMware

[Contrarian]

Can someone recommend some good options for this?

I want to build a VMWare box that I can use for playing with VMware & hosting VMs for learning and development. What I'm looking for is a MB that:

- supports plenty of memory for running multiple VMs (Win 2K3 & 2K8), so I'd like to get a MB that supports 16 GB RAM (32 preferred but probably out of my price range).

- A quad core processor or support for two dual-core procs

- Onboard RAID 5 SATA (I'll probably get 3-4 500GB SATA II drives and one DVD/CD drive).

Everything else is secondary. Onboard VGA would be nice also. I'll get a RAID 5 card if needed. Finding a decent MB with plenty of RAM is what I think is the biggest concern.

 

[gators1223]

if you want 32gb of ram supported then this will work at $300 w/ vga
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131169
for a cheaper one you have to go amd, which might be better first has nearly no expandability but is $100 second is $300
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813151070
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813151099

 

[Kaldor]

Get a P45 board from Asus or Gigabyte. Supports raid 5 and 16 gigs of ram. Throw in a cheap video card and your set. Will also easily support a hardware RAID card via PCI Xpress if needed.

Id use a quad core though. IIRC VM Ware will make full use of a quad. Look at one of the Yorkfield, IE Q9XXX chips.

Edited: because my brain stops working sometimes....

 

[airblazer]

You don't need 16Gbs for VMs.
I'm running Vista 64bit and Ubuntu on this system and it runs fine.
I also have a W2K3 server on it and I'm trying to get OSX running as well though it's a bitch to get it to install on vmware.
Unless you plan on running about 12 VMs together with 2GB apiece 8Gb is loads.