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Can someone please recommend me a PC spec for serious work purposes. I am not asking for shopping advice, I am just asking for recommended spec details. Once I have the spec details, I can go and try finding the best products/prices matching/or getting close to the recommended spec details given by answers here.

I need a PC which can comfortably do the following

run 9+ 1Gb virtual machines at any given time
run gimp and render imagery fast
load, run eclipse fast and process code fast
mysql workbench should run fast
http://www.sumopaint.com/app/ should not lag
http://www.homestyler.com/designer should not lag

At the moment, I have a

CPU: Pentium D 3.0Ghz
RAM: 3Gb
GPU: built into motherboard

Which only lets me run about 2 1Gb vms at ones, gimp is really slow as is eclipse and mysql workbench. Also the 2 flash based apps are extremely laggy.

What spec would you recommend so I can run the above without any lag issues, get gimp to render fast and eclipse to work fast, and the flash apps to run without lag, including 4 monitors to give me a large desktop?

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closed as not constructive by Marcel Stimberg, fossfreedom♦, hhlp, Jorge Castro, jrg♦ Jan 2 '12 at 22:27

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1 Answer

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You would be better off with more than one machine, rather than finding one machine that can handle nine VMs simultaneously and render GIMP images, etc. Finding one single machine that could handle that workload would cost more than several 'normal' machines to spread out the workload. Here is the website for Ubuntu Certified hardware. Forget about laptops unless you really need one for travel. You are looking at multiple fairly expensive machines for that list of specs.

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If the spec has 16Gb RAM, wouldn't that be plenty for the 9+ 1Gb VMs? – oshirowanen Dec 18 '11 at 12:55
It would be plenty to allocate each virtual machine with 1GB RAM, but you would have additional high demand for processor power, among other things. Your hard drive access time would be way up, too. Again, you are probably better off buying two different machines, rather than building one uber-machine. Try finding other people who do the same kind of work, and ask what they use. You might be over-estimating your needs. You might save money by scaling back your specs. – Tom Brossman Dec 18 '11 at 13:10

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