long story short, between r/vfio, Wendell from level1techs and LTT i found a great solution to my “problem”. i’ve had budget/mediocre windows gaming machines before along with my linux machine(s) and wanted to consolidate them. I originally started out about year ago with a dell t3600 but for some reason that never worked the way i hoped.
fast forward to a couple weeks ago and i got this beast up and running:
-X9SRA motherboard
-E5-1650 V2
-48GB ECC ram(expanding to 64GB soon. max of 8gb sticks)
-gt218 host gpu(used to test, being swapped with 1050ti soon)
-RX580 8GB Windows 10 VM(passedthrough)
-250gb host ssd
-500gb w10 VM ssd(passthrough)
-512gb nvme w10 VM ssd with silverstone adapter
-2 port usb 3 pcie adapter(passthrough)
I am running ubuntu 20.04 with kernel 5.4.x. one reason i chose this board is that from supermicro’s site shows the block diagram and everything is in it’s own iommu group, making passing through devices super easy.
To be honest, no idea. Didn’t really think about it During install. The fan blows up and above the cooler(can’t see in the photo) there’s a 120mm exhausting the case( as well as the rear). There’s two fan slots up there and have the option to add another I just didn’t have one when I put this together. The cooler is rated for 175w tdp (cpu is 150 tdp) and if need be I plan to add another fan to the cooler. So far temps are low/medium for pretty much everything. Sensors can’t see the nvme drive for some reason but I’ve got a fan to add to blow directly on it.
it’s still front to back. the top fan is right over the cooler. from what i remember, both the top and rear fans have the same airflow output outside the case. the top slightly more and this is by feel rather than any actual measurement. looking at the cooler on amazon it looks like if i turn it the fan will hit the sticks right next to the cpu. when i get home i will check clearance and if everything is manageable, i’ll rotate the cooler.
