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I have an HP Slimline 450a sitting as an office desktop machine. https://support.hp.com/gb-en/document/c04816376 I need this computer (or a computer in the same spot) with much more RAM and better support for virtual machines (e.g. faster IO, as much CPU as can be afforded reasonably). Currently 8GB RAM, motherboard supports 16GB. Basically I need to test various virtual machine images, mostly web servers and databases, switching frequently, and my experience is the bottleneck in testing is usually the CPU performance of the virtual machines, or memory, with the odd bit of disk IO making the performance uneven at times. Although no doubt I'll push the bottleneck to my Internet connection if I make the right hardware decisions. Can find DDR3-1600 8GB DIMMS at ~£28 each. Can get 1TB SATA SSD for £83 So ~£139 I can resolve the immediate performance issues, and no doubt read my emails milliseconds quicker. But the box is getting a bit long in the tooth, perfect condition as I treat hardware the way it should be treated, but feels I'm throwing good money into something that doesn't have much future. The main hardware issue I've noticed so far due to age is lack of HDMI output (if I want audio from my monitor, can work around that with a 3.5mm AUX cable for 70 pence). Various people will do me a reconditioned laptops with Intel i5 (various speeds) with good Linux support with 16GB RAM and 250GB SSD for under £400 which I think would be adequate JUST for the task at hand, and allow the occasional bit of work out and about assuming that lockdown eventually ends (also the nearest McDonalds has a better Internet connection than I do!?!), and keep this particular work separate from my other kit. But I suspect such a laptop will have a similarly short useful life, at least as a development box. Is the i5 suitable for VMs? The AMD chip in the Slimline is roughly comparable to i5-4200 as I understand it, but I know when getting it, it was basically cheapest desktop that would just work and last me for desktop computing, was never intended for "real work", but does support SVM. Pushing to i7 or beyond or more RAM looks like more money than I want to throw at this project. Although I'm tempted by the NUC and other small form factor devices which can throw more CPU and more RAM at the problem, and replace the Slimline long term. But anything with 32GB and i7 seems to get me to £550+. What hardware features will I miss in future if I buy a recondition box or upgrade the Slimline, rather than spend proper money now? USB C, HDMI, and ....??? Are there any options for running VMs in a home environment I should be looking at? I could network in a headless box with the VMs on I guess but actually on the same physical hardware simplifies security. Virtualisation software currently is Debian Virtual Machine Manager. I'm not wedded to it or indeed Debian, anything that is readily scripted is fine, currently using Vagrant for similar project, but types of virtualisation all seems pretty interchangeable and inter-operable from a developer perspective. Everyone offers a base Debian stable image or it is easy to create one. Also the VMs and the testing don't need any backing up, the important stuff will all be in git repos or a couple of config files, so another advantage of keeping it separate is I won't need to exclude it from backups etc. -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG https://mailman.dcglug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/listfaq