Bureaucromancer

So it looks like a bunch of the NCIX Vancouver stores are closing now... Anybody know anything? These guys pretty much finished at this point? That's really quick after Ontario and Tech Tips shutting down.

Yeah, X299 has problems but with two GPUs and a fairly simple setup there's nothing hugely pushing toward TR or Intel. You've absolutely got more lanes on 399, but its not needed for a pair of cards... I do lean toward recommending TR for somewhat more cores at a somewhat lower price if video's a factor, but it's the less mature of the platforms for all it's issues.

In terms of being thorough, check drivers, windows install itself and maybe talk to support, but it does sound like a failing card assuming you don't have some over aggressive overclock in place..

So the short version is do you want something to tinker with or that just works? Because if it's a question of something that just works, yes, you want separate machines (though I could make the case for UnRaid if you're custom building the server, and definitely agree that the hardware in a lot of off-the-shelf nas' is anemic at best). That said, as a project pc something like this DOES work. As far as using a 1600, it definitely sound reasonable, although more as NAS + desktop than something potentially capable of multiple simultaneous desktops. Practically speaking I'd point out Docker and mismatched drive sizes as pretty major upsides to UnRaid, but suggest that virtualizing your desktop is more a thing to be done for the sake of it, though there definitely is potential to make better use of available resources if you're running heavier server applications. Multi gamer setups are also definitely fun, if a bit gimmicky for most people. I'd say that this is probably best for people already attracted to, or ideally already familiar with, UnRaid, but quite reasonable if it's something you WANT to do. I also believe that it will be a lot more meaningful to talk of this kind of thing's long term potential after an update or two to UnRaid and once the Ryzen BIO's have settled down a bit - as things sit we don't have all relevant drivers and updates in the Linux kernel, there are some stability issues that seem early adopter related but are still rather mysterious, and Ryzen itself is getting patches that AMD themselves describe as stability related.

And in further good news, it looks like the Ryzen related crashing is most likely something to do with idle c-states. It is, by all appearances, fixed by turning off "Global C-State Control" on the mobo, although at the cost of about 15w idle power consumption. Lime Tech is looking into it, but I'm now actually comfortable saying that it works properly.

Sorry to disappear, been waiting until I could say something more definitive and it's taken me this long to work through my own hardware quirks with IOMMU and general configuration, but as of now I've got two vms running with IOMMU passthrough to both my graphics cards (a GTX 970 and an RX 460, which I've got some interesting notes on getting working that boil down to 460s seeming to be a little finnicky in their own right). If anyone cares to take a look there are a number of us working through issues on the Lime-Tech forums, but what it boils down to right now is that VMs seem to be completely stable, and bar the grouping issues, which AMD seems interested in addressing and which ACS passthrough is working as expected for (which is basically almost perfectly for desktop stuff bar GPUs similar enough that they cause cross-talk problems). There are, however, some really odd UnRaid specific (as in not even appearing in Linux desktop installs from what we've heard) stability issues that suggest to me you might want to hold off a bit but that things are promising. In very short, idle UnRaid systems lock up, quite consistently, within 36 hours of boot. A running Windows 10 VM, even idle seems to prevent this. Possibly related is that running a Linux (or at least Ubuntu) VM seems to be able to bring down the whole system, and do so regularly. This is all really odd, but happening to multiple people - right now looking to be UnRaid itself causing the issue somehow, since, among other things, the current release (6.3.2 until about an hour ago and 6.3.3 at the moment) have had Ryzen kernel updates backported to them, though there is interest in what might happen once the Kernel version they actually come from is available. So, short version, it works, with some issues. If you're comfortable being an early adopter it's looking good, but if you need guarantees and/or a production ready or just as easy to use as an on-the-metal gaming rig, hold off a big, there are substantial issues. These issues are probably even worse for anyone trying to run a straight server environment, but that's probably going to be more of an issue once we start getting R5 and R3 than it is right now. I'd also note that for the gaming crowd (frankly it doesn't bother me much in the NAS role) UnRaid's temperature monitoring and fan control plugins aren't ready for Ryzen hardware at the moment (shame since I've got a cooling setup that would let me push airflow to any combination of CPU, GPU and drive pools under individual control).

So at this moment my build is working pretty well. I went ahead with an 1800X, the crosshair VI, a 970 for the VM and an RX460 in the primary (low enough power consumption and price I could bear using it for the host system and powerful enough to be interesting if I can ever coax the system into running a two-gamers one pc type multi headed thing). Basically the IOMMU groups are as bad as reported initally, but ACS override works almost perfectly, so splitting them hasn't actually been a problem. Performance and stability aren't perfect, but I'm reasonably happy at the moment. In short, yes, it is doable.

Just as an update, I've ordered an 1800x and the Crosshair. Will check in when somethings put together.

Yeah, no word on IOMMU on Ryzen, but UnRAID does support it on AMD so far as it exists at this point. I do see the argument for something a bit more standardized, but it definitely makes virtualization better than most other things. Ultimately though it's UnRAID and BTRFS itself that sold me on the platform (and the fact that yes, I'm running it) - other pooling options really don't work as well for a heterogeneous collection of drives. Until I went UnRAID a while ago I was running Amahi, and god was Greyhole bad. Storage spaces don't have proper parity and from everything I've heard have pretty awful performance. Suffice it to say I think I've seen enough to make this a bit of a build log if I go ahead.

Just checking in to see if anybody is seriously contemplating an attempt at an UnRAID VM/Gaming NAS type thing based around Ryzen fairly soon after launch? At the moment I'm more or less planning on swapping the mobo in my current NAS and experimenting with GPU passthrough using my current GPUs... It seems good at this point, but is there anyone out there who's worked with virutaliztion and pass-through on AMD stuff? Anything not obvious that I should know about coming off UnRAID on Intel hardware?

Yeah... Manually cancelled and renewed and it's back.

Huh, I think something's screwy with my paypal. Original purchase was Nov 26th, but renewal date is supposedly the 31st, rather suspect something's dropped in the interim.

What's your billing date? I'm wondering if maybe it didn't renew automatically properly?

Anybody else suddenly missing the floatplane club forum? From everything I can tell my subscription is still good and there's been no attempt to re-bill on paypal, but the forum itself is gone...