I'm a hardware guy from way back but I don't have any experience with VMWare. I assume that VMWare workstation is a para-virtualized environment. If that is the case any current generation system should be more than adequate. If this is just for educational purposes rather than production, I wouldn't be too concerned with being on the compatibility list. Testing costs lots of money, so very few systems get certified for any OS or application but generally they work just fine. The gotchas are likely to be video drivers and SATA controllers on new hardware.<div>
<br></div><div>As for specs, I would recommend a 500 Gig hard drive as a starting place, unless you want or need something larger (NewEgg has a 3TB Hitachi hard drive for like $119 this week) and I would suggest 6 to 8 GB of ram if you intend to run several VM instances.</div>
<div><br></div><div>If you would prefer to have a BOM for a system or a quote built on Newegg that you could just go order, I would be willing to help with that. Just let me know your budget and any preferences you have such as Intel or AMD for the CPU and hard drive brands and if you need an optical drive.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Best regards,</div><div>Greg Clifton<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 12:44 PM, John Heim <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:john@johnheim.net">john@johnheim.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">I'm looking for a good place to ask questions about PC hardware.<br>
<br>
I want to build a PC to run linux & VMWare workstation. I need to learn<br>
something about Windows systems administration (don't laugh) and I thought<br>
I'd make a virtual PDC and see if I can get virtual Windows machines to join<br>
the domain. And since I'm blind, I thought I'd take the opportunity to brush<br>
up on my hardware assembly skills too.<br>
<br>
So I need help specing out a machine and matching mobo, CPU, and RAM on<br>
newegg. But I don't know where to ask about that.<br>
<br>
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