AM4 mainboard for unraid use

[Caennanu]

Good day all,

 

Unraid has been a stable part of my home network for the last half year.

And as such, i'm demanding more and more from it.

 

Currently its running on an AM4 1700, with 32gb ram and my 'old' X370 MSI carbon.

This works fine, but as mentioned earlier, i'm demanding more and more from it.

Currently i have 2 NVME's installed, a x4 SAS controller, 4x HDD and 2x SSD, and i'm expanding.

 

Installed an additional nic to get a LAG going, installed a 2nd video card to use hardware acceleration for VM's and dockers.

And this is where i start running into issues.

Right now, i'm actually needing 3 active x16 slots, for 2 vga's and the SAS controller.

As it happens, due to me using 2 m.2 drives, i can't use my lowest x16 slot, or have not found a way to do so.

The x16 slots dont have to operate at x16, x4 should be sufficient (simply using an 1050Ti and mobility radeon 5430 as vga cards)

 

So i'm looking for either a solution to activate my 3rd x16 slot, so i can run 2 VGA's and the SAS controller alongside the 2 m.2 drives, or a mainboard that actually supports all this, hopefully without breaking the bank.

And for this, i turn to you!

 

Hope you all have some suggestions! 

 

p.s. my current case does not support the use of risers where i can turn a x1 slot to a x16 slot, or a x16 slot to 2 x16 slots.