I posted this message some days ago on the unRAID forum, but no answer as of now, so, I’ll just take a chance here.
I’m in the process of upgrading my unRAID server since I’m currently running it on an old Phenom 965. But, I’ve started to play with VMs and my actual config can’t do GPU passthrough. So, I would like to build an unRAID server capable of GPU passthrough for 3 concurrents gaming VMs with 3 GPU. And for now, I hesitate between a brand new 2700x on an Asus board or an old dual Opteron (G34) or dual Xeon on a Supermicro board or any other dual Xeon socket motherboard. There’s some pretty sick deals on ebay. I’ll probably throw 64 or 128GB of RAM but the main goal is to merge my current 5 machines into 1 and having some spare ressources for additionnal VMs/dockers. One more detail, I don’t play any super recent titles, as long as I’m able to run Warcraft 3 Reforged, Starcraft II and Diablo III, for now, it should be fine. But if I can play some more CPU/GPU intensive games, it would be excellent, as long as it doesn’t break the bank. And I would like a macOS Catalina VM so according to the unRAID forum, it will take an AVX2 and SSE 4.2 CPU.
Glad you posted here, also. I applaud your thought process, that you’re working out your needs. It’s so important to get clear. Though, I think you would be asking a lot of a single machine to do all that. Others with more gaming experience will probably chime in to give other viewpoints.
You’re probably right. But the 3 concurrents gaming machines will be use a handful of times throughout a year (when we have guest for LAN party…). Most of the times, it will be 2 gaming machines (my girlfriend and me). That’s why I thought that could be a realistic project. On another website, someone put me on another path, Threadripper but…that’s an expensive path to follow, especially for a 16-core/32-threads CPU. I’m seriously considering a dual LGA2011-3 with two E5-2650/2660/2670/2680 v3 (first gen with AVX2) with 128GB RAM… I’m also considering Proxmox instead of unRAID and building another machine in order to let my unRAID server intact (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!).
I don’t want to throw money out the window and being the eternal insecure that I am, I clearly prefer to find some advice before making any expensive decision. Not all people with this passion swim in money.
I really appreciate your taking the time to help me through the whole process.