this sounds awesome! i tried to setup a vfio setup( essentially the same thing) on a dell t3600. got everything setup and working but tweaking was a nightmare and overall it wasn’t what i was looking for. i chuck it mostly up to the dell and all their funny stuff. been looking at a supermicro board and e5-1620 with 32+ ram and my 1050ti and rx580. might have to bite the bullet and try that setup with unraid instead. at least from what i’ve seen since most things seem to in the gui it’s easier to get things working.
The Dell is actually pretty standard, and I think doing VFIO without Unraid’s assistance is kind of a PITA.
the iommu grouping was pretty good(everything in it’s own group). But for whatever reason i couldn’t get the rx580 to get over 52fps. same card in my gaming machine would get 70+ depending on the game. i’m sure it was user error but just wasn’t working for me the way i wanted. from videos i’ve seen i have to agree that unraid makes it so much easier. also think that this setup with unraid is a slightly different use case than a “standard” vfio build but overall better.
Perhaps you were CPU limited?
that would be a possibility. e5-2660 v1 was what i used. however, i had windows 10 as the original os and used a 1050ti and with that i got 60ish fps with wildlands. the 580 passthrough to win10 along with an ssd i never got above 52fps and would stay around the high 30s, low 40s. looking at maybe building a new vfio setup but will probably try unraid for that setup first.
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I plan to build a 2 client unraid game streamer. Looking for feedback on my choices…
Motherboard: Asus Prime X570-P
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600X
GPU 1: Nvidia GTX 1660 Super 6GB
GPU 2: AMD RX 550 2GB (I already own this dude)
thanks for any feedback!
Honestly if you’re just thinking about a dual system, I’d go for something like this instead -
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 1600AF (basically a Ryzen 5 2600)
Motherboard: ASUS Prime B450-Plus
Savings of about $175…
Do you need the extra features of the X570? You can still use 3rd-gen Ryzen on the B450 motherboard.
I picked the X570 as a step down from your reference build but just wanted support for Ryzen 3rd-gen. The B450 sounds fantastic. Thank you for that.
Do you have a recommendation for PSU and Case? I’d prefer a Mid Tower but could go Full if needed.
Assume 4 HDDs (unraid array), 3 SSDs (Cache + Home lab VMs) and 1 NVMe (primary VM). 32GB RAM.
I’d pick up a PSU this Wednesday at EVGA B-Stock.
Do you have a budget for a case? If it’s not too much, something like the good 'ol R5 would fit your needs quite well.
Yep… R5 looks great!
I’ll hit up EVGA B-Stock on Wednesday. What minimum specs should I look for on the PSU? 550 watts, gold efficiency? Should I be thinking bigger? I’m curious what you look for?
Is this a good pick for RAM? G SKILL 32GB
Thanks for answering all my questions… hopefully this is helpful to others also!
I’d look at something in the 700W + range just to be safe.
This is what I’m using, $10 less and the heat spreaders basically don’t do anything useful. Up to you, can’t go wrong either way.
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I just completed your guide. Thank you for writing this up and your contribution to the community! I’m doing some research on cpu isolation and pinning right now because I found those sections confusing. My current remote gaming setup is running but desktop & gaming seams be “floaty” or “skipping” a lot.
I followed your previous legacy guide for my Unraid server build and I’m running it on Dual Intel Xeon CPU X5690 @ 3.47GHz with 96GB Ram and a Nvidia RTX 2070. With similar cores as your setup, I copied the pinning as noted in the guide. Do you have any tips on how to improve the latency / “floating” feel? I dedicated 16GB ram and set the emulatorpin to 11,23.
Regarding ethernet, What settings should be done on the second ethernet port? Leave it disabled?
Not sure how important it is but when editing the XML, the graphics card and sound slots should match as well. This allowed my 2070 audio to show up within the sound devices.
Those with Macs as a daily driver can use wxHexEditor as an alternative to HxD.
I have noted in the guide about the multiple devices on the RTX series cards, and how they need to be all on the same device as well.
Have you tried any of the experimental settings, specifically for Hyper-V?
You don’t need the second ethernet port, unless you want to dedicate one to your VM.
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The Hyper-V experimental settings worked very well. Thank you for the suggestion.
I guess the only thing left is to fix a slight stuttering issue. I believe it has to do with poor pinning setup. Based on this video, he mentions that people with dual CPU should make sure that the pinned cpu’s are on the same socket for the best performance. How do I know which cpu pairs belong to which socket?
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Can you share your pinning strategy and XML CPU section?
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I just learned about having to keep the cpu pins on the same socket, so I’m testing out various combinations at the moment. The setup I had previously has been from your guide:
<vcpupin vcpu='0' cpuset='0'/>
<vcpupin vcpu='1' cpuset='12'/>
<vcpupin vcpu='2' cpuset='1'/>
<vcpupin vcpu='3' cpuset='13'/>
<emulatorpin cpuset='11,23'/>
