4 Gamers, 1 CPU

[Sweepi]

Inspiration:

Spoiler

2 Gamers 1 CPU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuJYMCbIbPk
7 Gamers 1 CPU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXOaCkbt4lI
n Gamers 1 CPU: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKJw8IKVYQ8

Hello fellow Gamers and Hardware experts,

first of all, for those who are interested, the tale:

Spoiler

This an attempt to infuse new life in our private LAN-Party scene.
Modern internet thought us all: In order to increase engagement, one must lower the barrier to entry as much as possible.
The most boring part of a LAN-Party is rebuilding the setup at home. 
Also, over the years, some of us got fancy and added external kable management to their desktop, 
which is nice, but in some cases makes it impossible to get the setup moving without disassembling it first.
Therefore, we need:

 

Goal
A PC build which allows the laziest 3 - 4 Gamers to attend a LAN-Party while only bringing their mouse and keyboard (and their USB-Headset)

 

I have:

• a "flexible" budget, but I want to spent es less money as reasonable possible
• an AMD HD7850, 2x AMD 560, 1x Nvidia 980, therefore I should be good on the required GPUs for now

I think I need:

• a motherboard with at least 4x PCIe 3.0 4x slots and "nice IOMMU groups" which do allow for GPU passthrough 
• 4 cores per Person would be nice, but 3 cores per Person should be fine as well
• 6+ GiB of RAM per Person

What comes to mind:

• a AMD 1920X build (64x PCIe 3.0; 12 Cores). CPU sells new for 250, motherboards with 4x PCIe 4x start at 300, 32 GiB DDR4 2666 start at 110
• some cheap old Intel server hardware?

The Questions:

Q1) Alternatives to a x399 / 1920X build?
Q1a) Cheap Intel LGA 1567/2011 server hardware?
Q1b) Maybe even first generation AMD EPIC hardware? (unlikely that they will go out of use any time soon, and way more expensive then 1920X if bought new)
Q2) Any personal experiences to tell?
Q3) [!] How do I make sure that GPU Passthrough will work? 
Q4) Any alternatives to unRAID? (I don't care about the $60 license fee if it works)

 

 

Looking forward to your suggestions

[Streetguru]

42 minutes ago, Sweepi said:

 

It's a very unreliable set up, you're better off on the Level 1 Techs forums.

More than likely just build some ITX PCs with like R5 1600s from ebay/aliexpress?

[Sweepi]

Nah, having 4 "useless" towers around vs. having 1 server which could also be used for other things does not sound too attractive.

Which part is unreliable? unRAID in general? GPU passthrough?

[Streetguru]

24 minutes ago, Sweepi said:

Nah, having 4 "useless" towers around vs. having 1 server which could also be used for other things does not sound too attractive.

Which part is unreliable? unRAID in general? GPU passthrough?

All of it lol. Especially performance/reliability.