Install VMware ESXi on Custom PCs - Step-by-Step Guide

Check One — A Network Card ESXi Actually Supports

ESXi includes native drivers only for a fixed set of enterprise-class hardware — Intel server and many Intel desktop NICs, Broadcom NetXtreme adapters and similar. Realtek, the chip on most budget and gaming motherboards, has no native driver at all. Before anything else, find your exact NIC model in Windows Device Manager or on the motherboard's specification page. A supported Intel chip means you are in business. A Realtek chip means you should plan on adding a PCIe Intel NIC (an i210 or i350 class card is the community favourite). If the installer later stops with "No network adapters were detected", this check is the reason — the card is not faulty, ESXi simply has no driver for it.

Check Two — CPU and BIOS Virtualisation Settings

Boot into the BIOS or UEFI setup and enable Intel VT-x (or AMD-V / SVM Mode on a Ryzen board), plus VT-d or IOMMU if you ever want to pass a device through to a VM. The CPU also has to be a 64-bit part, which in practice means anything from roughly the last decade. During installation, some older and some very new CPUs draw a warning that the CPU may not be supported in a future release — that is a note about VMware's support roadmap, not a failure, and the install continues. What is not optional is the virtualisation switch itself: with it off, ESXi installs but virtual machines run crippled or refuse to start.

Check Three — Memory, Storage and the Whole Disk Rule

8 GB of RAM is the practical floor for a useful lab — ESXi itself takes a few GB before your first VM starts — while 16 GB is comfortable and 32 GB is the sweet spot. You also need a boot device, ideally a SATA or NVMe SSD.

Download the ISO Only From VMware and Make the Boot USB

Download the ESXi installer ISO from VMware's official portal only — never from a third-party mirror. Broadcom asks for a free support-portal account to reach the downloads, and the terms have already changed more than once, so check the current picture on the official portal before you plan around it. Write the ISO to a USB stick with Rufus, or add it to a Ventoy stick if the same stick serves other installers. Do not write it to the disk you plan to install onto.

Run the Installer and Set the Root Password

Boot the USB stick in UEFI mode and let the installer load its driver modules — this loading phase is where an unsupported NIC stops the show. Select the target disk from the list and confirm that it will be repartitioned and erased. Choose your keyboard layout, then set a strong root password — this one password is the master key to the entire host, so make it long and unique. Press F11 to begin the installation. When it finishes, reboot and remove the USB stick. After the reboot you land on the DCUI — the plain grey-and-yellow console screen. That unglamorous screen means success: ESXi is a tiny operating system, and this console exists only for basic network setup and rescue work.

Configure the Management Network With F2

On the DCUI, press F2, log in as root, and open Configure Management Network. Under Network Adapters, confirm your supported NIC is the selected one. Then set a static IPv4 address on your home or office range, with the subnet mask, gateway and a hostname you will remember. A static address matters: the host's web address should not wander every time the router hands out new DHCP leases. Restart the management network when the console asks.

First Login From Your Browser

From any computer on the same network, open your host's address in the browser — in the video the host answers at this address:

https://192.168.1.50

Log in as root with the password you set in the installer. The browser will complain about the certificate because ESXi generates its own self-signed one. On your own LAN, for a host you just installed, that warning is expected: verify the address is the one you set, then proceed. You are now in the ESXi Host Client, where VMs, storage and networking are all managed.