My Office is coming along nicely now and my Homelab changed a bit during this time – its still very much Work In Progress but i have  usable lab which i am starting to setup fully.

Originally I planned on using a  HP DL380 G5 and a few HP Microservers for my lab – but i changed my mind.. Instead I opted for a HP XW6600 Workstation: HP XW6600

I got this off Ebay for about £100 – this was fairly Bare bones but had a Semi Decent Xeon Processor – E5440 @ 2.83GHz

Reasons for the this workstation:

• Supports Virtualization
• Can take 48GB of RAM (possibly 64GB still to confirm)
• Plenty of Space in the chassis for upgrades / expansion

You will also see from the above Image – It upgraded to Windows 10 with no issues at all – so I am now running Workstation 12.

I have installed 2 SATA drives – One for OS and a 2TB for VMs – but I just bought a 2.5″ Caddy to install an SSD which i will migrate my OS over to very shortly.

Also the Motherboard can take another CPU so I will end up with 2 x Xeon Processors (last time looked on Ebay they were around £15 – £20 for a CPU)

UPDATE: I purchased another CPU for £14 on Ebay Used, and realized that the Heatsink was actually going to cost more.  I purchased a used Heatsink for £30 and got this installed.  This now has 2 x Xeons CPUs with 8 Cores

UPDATE 2: I ordered 64GB RAM off Ebay for £90, The HP Specs state 32GB but so far I have added 48 GB and it is working fine.  Looks like I may have an issue with one of the DIMMS, so leaving it at 48GB for Now and will try again soon.

UPDATE 3: I ordered an SSD (Listed below) and I have used EaseUS Todo Backup Free to Clone my HDD to SSD

I now have 3 x Monitors; 2 x 22″ and 1 x 27″ which are hooked up to my MacBook Pro, see Three External Monitors Post

I am using Microsoft Remote Desktop to connect to my Lab PC and I have a couple of Linux Servers and a Kali Pi which i either use SSH or I have No Machine setup

These are all setup on Wall Mount Cantilevers so i can move them all around as necessary

Heres a list of what i have bought:

• Western Digital 2TB SATA III Hard Drive – WD 2TB Hard Drive – Currently £59.99
• Icy Box Internal Mounting Frame for 2x 2.5 inch SSD/HDD to 3.5 inch Bay – 2.5″/3.5″ Caddy – Currently £3.99
• BenQ GL2250HM LED 21.5 -inch Multimedia Monitor 1920 x 1080, DVI, HDMI,, 12M:1, 2 ms – Benq 21.5″ Monitor – Currently £88.13
• BenQ GW2760HM LED 27″ Monitor – Currently £164
• VonHaus Basics Cantilever Arm Bracket Wall Mount with Swivel and Tilt – Monitor Wall Mount – Currently £11.99
• HDMI KING 1.8M (6ft) Imperial Series 240hz+ HDMI Cable v1.4 Gold Plated, Double Insulated – HDMI Cables – Currently £2.59
• 48GB RAM Upgrade – Off Ebay for about £60
• Additional Xeon CPU – Off Ebay for £14
• CPU Heatsink – Off Ebay for £30
• Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD – £72.99
• Plugable Active Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Adapter