ADVICE NEEDED - System Config Advice 3 PC's Multi-Purpose

[kalvinnohobbes]

Hello Everyone,

Going round and round on which would be the best way to allocate my PC's to maximize the usage out of them. I have several needs and the amount of options are basically freezing my thought process at the moment. This post might get long as I explain my situation so apologies but appreciate the help. Currently I run everything from my main desktop and security and reliability are of concern. I run a multiple user PLEX that has 1-2 home users and 3-4 over internet users at times. At most I see 3-4 streams running at once but that is not very frequent, usually 1-2 home or internet users at a time.

My 3 rigs are (in order of newness):

Desktop 1
AMD FX-8300 @ 3.3ghz (Planning to OC sometime in future)
MSI 970 Gaming Mobo
16 gb DDR3 @ 933mhz - up-able to 32gb
GTX 750ti 2gb dual dvi
Sata 3 support - 6 ports
USB 2.0 and 3.0
single gbit network port

desktop 2
Intel core i5 750 @2.67ghz (Also planning to OC to between 3.2 and 3.5 in near future)
EVGA P55 SLI
12 gb DDR3 @ 667mhz - up-able to 16gb
Geforce 9500gt 1gb dual dvi
Sata 2 Support - 6 ports
dual gbit nic's

desktop 3 - OLD Intel P4 3ghz or 3.5ghz with HT
2gb SDRAM ram max
sata support (not sure which version) 2 ports
100mb nic
onboard GPU
Onboard USB 2.0
PCIe USB 3.0


I didn't list HDD for any machine because they are interchangeable but I have 3 SSD's 120gb, 4 Sata 3 2TB's, And a few other Sata 2 drives ranging from 300gb to 1.5gb.

Plan is to hook them all up to my Belkin SOHO DVI KVM 4 port

I need a physical desktop for everyday use and it has to be desktop 1 or 2 because I do resource extensive tasks at times, not often but frequent enough to need the horsepower on-demand.

I need to run the following between the 3 pc's:

Plex - 2 servers (with transcoding of 4-8gb mkv's) on separate hardware, one home network use only the other internet facing only.
Network Storage - for media library, data shares, on system backups, etc
FTP server
Linux (most likely Ubuntu or CentOS) - no real-world use (not a dig just my usage) , just enjoy having a Linux box.
Windows 10 - Physical machine
Windows 10 - VM
Windows 7 - VM

I am sure I will have other uses down the road but the above are my main concerns right now.
Since I have more needs than PC's the thought was to run ESXi 6.0 from either the AMD or i5 desktops with maybe 2-4 VM's running at any one time. If I put ESXi on the AMD and mostly only run Windows Server (Plex internet use only, file shares, etc) and a Windows 10 VM (downloading over VPN, software testing) am I wasting my more powerful resources? I would then put Windows 10 on the i5 to for everyday use and Plex home use only. Desktop 3 would become a Linux pc for me to goof around with and maybe make my ftp server (3+ gb files so not sure if it can handle it good enough).

Just looking for some advice that will give me the most out of this hardware. Thanks

 

[ComputerSecurityGuy]

I'd drop ESXi on the i5 box. It should be able to run a Plex server, a Linux VM and a Windows VM even, all at the same time. I might run the Windows VMs on you desktop though. I wouldn't bother with the P4 box, it guzzles power and isn't likely useful for your purposes.