unRAID server with thunderbolt? eGPU possible?

[ichihaifu]

Being inspired by 7 Gamers 1 CPU and personal build 2015 videologs, I came up with an idea to try come up with a solution to allow me to put 2 things in to one box (plus some services) and then put away my standard desktop if all of that would magically work.

 

What I planned to put in the box:

1. Windows 10 gaming PC in Virtual Machine

2. Router and Firewall in Virtual Machine

3. Plex, Deluge and MySQL in Docker containers.

 

After investigating what would probably allow me to do this:

Chassis: Chenbro RM31408 - http://www.chenbro.com/en-global/products/RackmountChassis/3U_Chassis/RM31408

CPU: Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2623 v3 - http://ark.intel.com/products/83354/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2623-v3-10M-Cache-3_00-GHz

Motherboard: Supermicro X10DAi - http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C600/X10DAi.cfm

RAM: Kingston KVR21R15S4K4/32  - http://www.kingston.com/us/memory/search/?partid=kvr21r15s4k4/32

Thunderbolt Card: DSL5320 - http://ark.intel.com/products/76719/Intel-DSL5320-Thunderbolt-2-Controller

Sidenote: I chose dual socket motherboard for the possibility to expand for future needs.

 

Originally I was looking in to Asus Z10PE-D16 WS motherboard since they are my preferred manufacturer, but I came to realize after looking in to things further: Thunderbolt is not a simple plug-n-play PCI-E technology -> It would be flat out impossible to use Thunderbolt with this board, and given that there are no dual CPU socket motherboards with Thunderbolt available I had to go for the only alternative, Supermicro.

Then after thinking about it a bit more.. Q: Is thunderbolt simply going to work over the PCI-E card and utilize GPU properly since it has to be implemented as separate module? I did see that it SHOULD work in the deployment video, but it was also Asus card and motherboard, so there was bound to be some compatibility.

 

AND not to keep things too simple:

eGPU(?): Razer Core - http://www.razerzone.com/gaming-systems/razer-blade-stealth

 

Q: Is there any chance in a million years this would work, and passthrough correctly to the Windows 10 Virtual Machine or is it better to scratch the entire hope for eGPU possibility given the fact that I'm already planning such an extraordinary setup?

 

If this is something that would actually work, I will start the project and display the end results