I'm in the process of selecting a PC. I'm in a bit of a conundrum as my budget is limited. I need to run Windows 10 Professional and Linux Debian distro on the same PC. I hope to install one of them on a virtual machine. When it comes to virtual machine performance what is most important: RAM, processor speed/capacity, or hard drive speed?
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If you could edit your question to be a bit more on-topic this would be a good question. Its a little broad and asking more tech support related questions.– user1691Commented May 28, 2019 at 13:37
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When choosing a PC to run 1 or more OS on a virtual machine, what is more important, RAM, Hard drive speed, or processor speed/capacity?– Lou_ACommented May 28, 2019 at 14:06
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2 Answers
I would advise you to consider, independently of everything, an SSD, since it is a component that really makes the difference. I recommend 16GB of RAM, so you can ensure a remarkable longevity, both for local use and for VM.
I agree with Daniele re the performance advantage of SSDs, but specifically, lots of fast RAM is the single most important component for running VMs. If you can't fit all your systems in RAM at once, they'll be bogged down with swapping, no matter how fast your SSD. Conversely if you've lots of excess RAM, boots will be slower from spinning disks, but subsequent disk caching may well improve performance beyond what's available from SSDs in a RAM starved machine.
