Considering an unraid VR build

Blindsay · February 10, 2020

Hey all,

Posted on the unraid forums but i figured i would post here as well since I know a lot of folks run unraid and the the LTT unraid videos are part of what got me thinking of this idea.

So right now I have 2 separate systems, a 9600K/2080S VR Gaming Machine (attached a picture of it for reference) and a 3900X unraid build. On their own they work great but there is definitely some wasted resources between the two. I thought it would be really cool to do a single crazy water cooled Threadripper 3960X build but i am worried about how reliable VR gaming will be in a VM.

I have read that buying a usb addon card and passing through the entire card helps and i dont mind some tinkering/process to get it setup initially but i dont want to mess with it every day.

Curious to those who have done gaming VM's what their experience has been with reliability (after getting it setup)

Thanks!

Edit: Also, I did consider a 3950X but I suspect it will not have enough PCIE lanes/possibly not enough CPU power.

If i were to use my current motherboard from my 3900X this is what I would need for slots,

x16 - 2080 Super

x1 - Dual port NIC (Mobo only has a single 1Gb NIC)

x1 - GT 710 GPU since the cpu has no gpu built in

x4 - PCIE to x4 NVME adapter because my mobo only has 2 nvme slots and I run 2 drives in the cache pool and 1 external

x4 - a good 4 port usb card (still working on which one).

As mentioned above I also have 2x nvme drives that consume 4 lanes each.

I want to run my valve index on the gamine machine and also possibly get into some basic mixed reality vr capture, my plex setup which has about 75% of the 3900X allocated to it, and a small minecraft server

Thought about maybe the 10980XE as it has more lanes then the 3950X but is still $400 cheaper than the 3960X but I am not sure if that makes much sense

Blindsay · February 12, 2020

So I have heard from a few folks that have done a similar build (at least a gaming vm build) and it has been reliable for them.

Right now I am debating the jump from something like a 3950X to the 3960X. If the 3960X is the only way to make it work ill save up a bit longer and go that route but if i dont have to spend the extra money id rather not ($750 vs $1400 for the cpu and $250 vs $450 for the mobo (also i am not sure my 750w psu would be enough at that point))

Right now my 3900X handles unraid and I have a small minecraft server on it (that i give 2c/4t) and then the rest is pretty much just for Plex. The 3950X is basically the 3900X + 4c/8t so i was thinking of giving that extra to my gaming VM (that should be more than my current 9600K correct?)

I also just have to make sure i dont run out of PCIE lanes. Since i plan to get a mobo with at least dual NIC i could ditch my addin card for that. That leaves the 2080S, the GT710 (x1), a usb card (likely a 4 port x4 card) and then i would make sure i get a mobo with 3x nvme slots and at least 8x SATA slots

Trying to decide on a case, Looking at possibly the thermaltake tower 900