2 or 3 in 1 gaming rig

[Final Blade]

Budget (including currency): US $2500? (rough number, this number does not include the price of graphics cards)

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Photoshop, minecraft, Horizon zero dawn.

Other details Existing parts lists, this is a bit pointless, listing the massive amount of parts I have is pointless, if most of them are older than 10 year old hardware.

I have working mice, keyboards, speakers, headsets, etc.

 

Goal: Have a computer that I can use unraid on to make a 3 in 1 gaming rig. For use by myself, my wife and my child. We play games together, but the child does get annoyed her computer takes another 5+ minutes to load a game.

I plan to go AMD, simply more cores and less power is an obvious bonus. But which CPU should I get.

Graphics cards would have to at least handle 1440p. We only have 22" 1080p at most monitors now, but plan to uograde in the future.

 

I am assuming it will save myself the money of having one massive computer I am virtualizing, then buying repeated parts over and over again. One power supply, one motherboard, 1 cpu, 1 set of raid 1 nvme drives for OS(s), 1 set of raid 1 drives for data.

 

I expect graphics cards will cost be about $500 each, and would be purchased whenever they become available and whatever we are up to by then. I expect they will likely be radeon to work with infinity cache.

Does infinity cache work instead a unraid machine?

 

I do not know what motherboard to get:

What boards support 3 GPUs without going through the chipset?

Likely needs onboard video as well, so the unraid can have a graphics card as well.

What boards support raided nvme drives, and has space for at least 2 of them, Would 3 be better to separate unraid OS from the rest of the OS(s).

Ram, i definitely want an upgrade path here. Likely will start with each OS(s) having 16GB, but I definitely want to upgrade to 32GB per OS or more in the future. And what speed Ram should I go.

 

This might be the first time, but RGB is a bonus to the build. This is the first time I would love to have RGB lighting. If we have only one family computer might as well make it look good.

 

What is a good case for doing this kind of build. I original thought of using a case I have, I have 2 cases that are big enough, but I realized none of them have usb 3 front ports, or even usb 2.0 ports. They both only have usb 1 front ports, and that just does not seem to be a good idea.

 

My network at home only is cat 5e, I plan to replace that at some point with cat 6. So the build will likely need at less 2 nics.

 

I would like to go with 80+ platinum power supply, not sure what wattage I would need.

 

Any suggestions on what I should get once parts are actually available to purchase.

If the choice is between horsepower or efficiency. I would go efficiency, the goal would be using this computer until it is driven into the ground, and if and when an upgrade has to be done, this could then have 2 graphics cards  removed and turned into a dedicated single user computer.

 

 

 

 

[tire]

if its a 2 in 1 system, try the corsair obsidian 1000d, it has space for a e atx and a itx motherboards.

if its 3 in 1 I have no idea how to do that at all, case mod maybe?

[dizmo]

Just now, tire said:

if its a 2 in 1 system, try the corsair obsidian 1000d, it has space for a e atx and a itx motherboards.

if its 3 in 1 I have no idea how to do that at all, case mod maybe?

You don't have to have three physical CPUs, you can get one with a lot of cores and make VMs.

[curiousmind34]

3 minutes ago, Final Blade said:

Budget (including currency): US $2500? (rough number, this number does not include the price of graphics cards)

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Photoshop, minecraft, Horizon zero dawn.

Other details Existing parts lists, this is a bit pointless, listing the massive amount of parts I have is pointless, if most of them are older than 10 year old hardware.

I have working mice, keyboards, speakers, headsets, etc.

 

Goal: Have a computer that I can use unraid on to make a 3 in 1 gaming rig. For use by myself, my wife and my child. We play games together, but the child does get annoyed her computer takes another 5+ minutes to load a game.

I plan to go AMD, simply more cores and less power is an obvious bonus. But which CPU should I get.

Graphics cards would have to at least handle 1440p. We only have 22" 1080p at most monitors now, but plan to uograde in the future.

 

I am assuming it will save myself the money of having one massive computer I am virtualizing, then buying repeated parts over and over again. One power supply, one motherboard, 1 cpu, 1 set of raid 1 nvme drives for OS(s), 1 set of raid 1 drives for data.

 

I expect graphics cards will cost be about $500 each, and would be purchased whenever they become available and whatever we are up to by then. I expect they will likely be radeon to work with infinity cache.

Does infinity cache work instead a unraid machine?

 

I do not know what motherboard to get:

What boards support 3 GPUs without going through the chipset?

Likely needs onboard video as well, so the unraid can have a graphics card as well.

What boards support raided nvme drives, and has space for at least 2 of them, Would 3 be better to separate unraid OS from the rest of the OS(s).

Ram, i definitely want an upgrade path here. Likely will start with each OS(s) having 16GB, but I definitely want to upgrade to 32GB per OS or more in the future. And what speed Ram should I go.

 

This might be the first time, but RGB is a bonus to the build. This is the first time I would love to have RGB lighting. If we have only one family computer might as well make it look good.

 

What is a good case for doing this kind of build. I original thought of using a case I have, I have 2 cases that are big enough, but I realized none of them have usb 3 front ports, or even usb 2.0 ports. They both only have usb 1 front ports, and that just does not seem to be a good idea.

 

My network at home only is cat 5e, I plan to replace that at some point with cat 6. So the build will likely need at less 2 nics.

 

I would like to go with 80+ platinum power supply, not sure what wattage I would need.

 

Any suggestions on what I should get once parts are actually available to purchase.

If the choice is between horsepower or efficiency. I would go efficiency, the goal would be using this computer until it is driven into the ground, and if and when an upgrade has to be done, this could then have 2 graphics cards  removed and turned into a dedicated single user computer.

 

 

 

 

16x3=48 lanes for graphics card. 3x4=12 lanes for storage if you get 3 drives, you likely need to go threadripper. IIRC Linus said that new threadrippers are likely to come last month in his video he recently released about the new epyc chips, so I would wait for threadrippers with zen 3.
You are likely going to buy 64 gigs of ram since thats a round number, and allocate 21 to each vm. 
Threadrippers and 3070s are power hungry, you are likely looking for maybe around a 1500 watt power supply.
I would go with a 4 terabyte ssd and create partitions as it creates more flexibility in partition sizes, unless you think you will pull out the ssds and use them individually one day.
When it comes to graphics cards around $500 (or rather, should be around 500) you have the rx6700xt and 3070, 3070 is much better for ray tracing and 6700xt is a bit faster in traditional rasterization

[tech.guru]

57 minutes ago, Final Blade said:

Budget (including currency): US $2500? (rough number, this number does not include the price of graphics cards)

Country: US

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Photoshop, minecraft, Horizon zero dawn.

Other details Existing parts lists, this is a bit pointless, listing the massive amount of parts I have is pointless, if most of them are older than 10 year old hardware.

I have working mice, keyboards, speakers, headsets, etc.

 

Goal: Have a computer that I can use unraid on to make a 3 in 1 gaming rig. For use by myself, my wife and my child. We play games together, but the child does get annoyed her computer takes another 5+ minutes to load a game.

I plan to go AMD, simply more cores and less power is an obvious bonus. But which CPU should I get.

Graphics cards would have to at least handle 1440p. We only have 22" 1080p at most monitors now, but plan to uograde in the future.

 

I am assuming it will save myself the money of having one massive computer I am virtualizing, then buying repeated parts over and over again. One power supply, one motherboard, 1 cpu, 1 set of raid 1 nvme drives for OS(s), 1 set of raid 1 drives for data.

 

I expect graphics cards will cost be about $500 each, and would be purchased whenever they become available and whatever we are up to by then. I expect they will likely be radeon to work with infinity cache.

Does infinity cache work instead a unraid machine?

 

I do not know what motherboard to get:

What boards support 3 GPUs without going through the chipset?

Likely needs onboard video as well, so the unraid can have a graphics card as well.

What boards support raided nvme drives, and has space for at least 2 of them, Would 3 be better to separate unraid OS from the rest of the OS(s).

Ram, i definitely want an upgrade path here. Likely will start with each OS(s) having 16GB, but I definitely want to upgrade to 32GB per OS or more in the future. And what speed Ram should I go.

 

This might be the first time, but RGB is a bonus to the build. This is the first time I would love to have RGB lighting. If we have only one family computer might as well make it look good.

 

What is a good case for doing this kind of build. I original thought of using a case I have, I have 2 cases that are big enough, but I realized none of them have usb 3 front ports, or even usb 2.0 ports. They both only have usb 1 front ports, and that just does not seem to be a good idea.

 

My network at home only is cat 5e, I plan to replace that at some point with cat 6. So the build will likely need at less 2 nics.

 

I would like to go with 80+ platinum power supply, not sure what wattage I would need.

 

Any suggestions on what I should get once parts are actually available to purchase.

If the choice is between horsepower or efficiency. I would go efficiency, the goal would be using this computer until it is driven into the ground, and if and when an upgrade has to be done, this could then have 2 graphics cards  removed and turned into a dedicated single user computer.

 

 

 

 

so to me this isnt really a mature technology and i dont see much value to do these 3 in 1 computers compared to going in separate builds.

first there is a lot of challenges,

              power requirements.... in order to dedicated graphics you need massive amounts of power to be able to power all these cards

              cooling......... you will have massive amounts of heat in a small enclosure with all those GPU inside a single case

              single point of failure.... while 3 separate systems would be there own single point of failure all three systems failing would be a lot less of a chance compared to everything in one unit

              costs... it may sound silly but it probably be more expensive to build a three graphic single system than three seperate systems. performance would also be worse

               * 6 core processor, (AMD ryzen 5 3600( is around $260. 3 of them is around $780

                  a 24 core processor (Threadripper 3960X) is around 1800 cad

              * 500 watt powersupply is about $65, * 3 is around  $195

               1600 watt powersupply is around $549

              * B550 motherboard is around $160 * 3 is 480, where as the sTRX4 is around $1000

 

and the big benifit sharing the graphics card? well thats not possible with consumer cards (nvidia locks these to telsa and enterprise offerings). in the enterpise cards  each virtual GPU requires its own license (vDWS) for Quadro (intended for autocad and not gaming would be poorly optimized) and is around $1000 per license!

 

you could share via a software driver on hypervisor (vSGA) but performance would be terrible. these are intended to share grahics using a generic driver for light 3d workload not demanding games expect terrible performance and unplayable games.

 

i just dont see any benefit to this setup. even in the enterprise we have much moved away from single monanthlic servers.... this is one advantages of virtualization is clustering.

 

now you could create a cluster of those three smaller machines and passthrough the graphics to a virtual machine (pci pass through) and use that virtual machine for gaming. however, you will find the maturity very low as gaming isnt a big driver for a lot of these hypervisors.

 

it would make however alot more sense than a single server. you could host other virtual machines with any spare memory and compute linux etc. if you dont like it you could just wipe the computers and install windows.

 

however i would  just say avoid the complexity and costs and go with 3 physical machines whether you decide to virtualize with a hypervisor or not. linus does a lot of things that doesnt make sense when you step back and look at things financially and practically.

hes a youtuber he creates entertaining content.

[Bombastinator]

I’m assuming by “3 in 1” you mean 3 gamers 1 pc.  Those things are supposed to tend to be more expensive than 3 separate PCs, their gain, such as it is, mostly comes if 1or 2 of the 3 rarely if ever actually use it.
They seemed to me like a massive PITA for very little if any gain.  Useful as an internet stunt like that guy who cooked a chicken by making a machin that slapped it over a hundred thousand times, but not actually all that practical.   If it was it would be regularly employed by business.  The whole mainframe/client system was the way things originally worked and it was moved away from.

 

I suppose you could make one with a 12 core cpu and use virtual machines to split it in 3 pieces for 4 cores each. 12 core CPUs have been a bit hard to get lately.  I’m not sure what all is involved but there were several videos on such a thing. 

[tech.guru]

2 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I’m assuming by “3 in 1” you mean 3 gamers 1 pc.  Those things are supposed to tend to be more expensive than 3 separate PCs, their gain, such as it is, mostly comes if 1or 2 of the 3 rarely if ever actually use it.
They seemed to me like a massive PITA for very little if any gain.  Useful as an internet stunt like that guy who cooked a chicken by making a machin that slapped it over a hundred thousand times, but not actually all that practical.   If it was it would be regularly employed by business.  The whole mainframe/client system was the way things originally worked and it was moved away from.

 

I suppose you could make one with a 12 core cpu and use virtual machines to split it in 3 pieces for 4 cores each. 12 core CPUs have been a bit hard to get lately.  I’m not sure what all is involved but there were several videos on such a thing. 

who actuals does this even? I never thought it made sense when he did the video

i guess if you have expensive hardware lying around or its given to you okay it might.... '

but for most of us be much more cost effective buying three separate systems and a hell of lot less complex

[tech.guru]

29 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I’m assuming by “3 in 1” you mean 3 gamers 1 pc.  Those things are supposed to tend to be more expensive than 3 separate PCs, their gain, such as it is, mostly comes if 1or 2 of the 3 rarely if ever actually use it.
They seemed to me like a massive PITA for very little if any gain.  Useful as an internet stunt like that guy who cooked a chicken by making a machin that slapped it over a hundred thousand times, but not actually all that practical.   If it was it would be regularly employed by business.  The whole mainframe/client system was the way things originally worked and it was moved away from.

 

I suppose you could make one with a 12 core cpu and use virtual machines to split it in 3 pieces for 4 cores each. 12 core CPUs have been a bit hard to get lately.  I’m not sure what all is involved but there were several videos on such a thing. 

those consumer CPU and chipsets do not have enough pci express lanes (24) to drive 3 graphics cards in x16 config. you would be x8 config for each card and that would be a significant performance hit.

but most x570 boards only have 2 slots and pcie lanes may be consumed by other components such as sata and nvme storage.

 

I think you would need to go to the thread ripper (its workstation line 88 non pro, pro 128) or even epyc (server, 128 lanes) if you wanted full x16 performance.

these boards also have 3 slots and have extra lanes not just for graphics for your storage and other components

[tdkid]

your issue is that you are looking for a 3 in 1 case and that just doesnt exist as far as i can tell. most cases that do support more than one system only support 2 with the second system more than likely being a micro ATX or ITX motherboard. this is a list someone started of dual system cases and what power supplies they can have. if your budget is $2500, price out one system you all can agree one and then double or triple the price.

 

Dual System/PSU Case Lists - Cases and Mods - Linus Tech Tips

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, tdkid said:

your issue is that you are looking for a 3 in 1 case and that just doesnt exist as far as i can tell. most cases that do support more than one system only support 2 with the second system more than likely being a micro ATX or ITX motherboard. this is a list someone started of dual system cases and what power supplies they can have. if your budget is $2500, price out one system you all can agree one and then double or triple the price.

 

Dual System/PSU Case Lists - Cases and Mods - Linus Tech Tips

This seems to be another definition of “3 in 1” 3 different motherboards in a single case.  I suppose it could also be a thematic build for “3 in 1 oil”, which is just about the only place I know of where “3 in 1” is really defined.

[tdkid]

1 minute ago, Bombastinator said:

This seems to be another definition of “3 in 1” 3 different motherboards in a single case.  I suppose it could also be a thematic build for “3 in 1 oil”, which is just about the only place I know of where “3 in 1” is really defined.

what? i do not understand what you are saying.

 

all i can tell you is go back and read the first post. they are looking for a computer in which the dad, mom and son can all play one 1 computer. this type of set up does not exist as far as i can tell. the best i can see them doing is getting a dual system case. or they can price out the components for a single build that will fit all their needs and double or triple the price to see if that is within their budget for 3 single PCs

[tech.guru]

this is classic example of searching for a solution to a problem that doesnt exist.

buy three systems and you will be happy, your family will be happy.

you will live a long life and avoid a divorce.

 

you dont need to make this more complex and expensive. linus tore apart his three person pc recently and as far as im aware no one even used it in the office

 

if i had 2500 dollars i would want a solution that works. i wouldnt want them to suffer though endless troubleshooting and never get it working. it would also suck blowing 2500 dollars on expensive hardware only to tear everything apart.

 

also realistically its around 4000 dollars without graphics because you are moving to higher core count processor, higher capacity dimms, more expensive power supplies... these are typically only needed in the workstation and enterprise space with a premium price. 

 

the reality its cheaper, and easier to buy three pcs off of consumer parts.

dont over complicate things.

[tech.guru]

11 minutes ago, tdkid said:

what? i do not understand what you are saying.

 

all i can tell you is go back and read the first post. they are looking for a computer in which the dad, mom and son can all play one 1 computer. this type of set up does not exist as far as i can tell. the best i can see them doing is getting a dual system case. or they can price out the components for a single build that will fit all their needs and double or triple the price to see if that is within their budget for 3 single PCs

hes not talking about two separate computers hes talking about the video linus did awhile back using virtualization for this project.

 

you know where he had like 30k worth of graphics tried to spend a week getting it ready and ending up building separate systems anyways

[Bombastinator]

15 minutes ago, tdkid said:

what? i do not understand what you are saying.

 

all i can tell you is go back and read the first post. they are looking for a computer in which the dad, mom and son can all play one 1 computer. this type of set up does not exist as far as i can tell. the best i can see them doing is getting a dual system case. or they can price out the components for a single build that will fit all their needs and double or triple the price to see if that is within their budget for 3 single PCs

Which can still be run a number of ways.  The simplest and easiest is a single computer with multiple accounts on it.  This requires only a single machine with a single motherboard.  It’s a standard thing built into basically every operating system and requires no special anything.  Only one person can use the thing at a time though.  There is also putting multiple motherboards in one case which is really 3 different computers.  That was what it seemed to me that that post was about.  The third option is running 3 virtual machines on a single computer with a single motherboard simultaneously. The “3 gamers one computer” system in which multiple sets of peripherals and video cards are attached and the 3 people can all play in the same game instance at the same time.  It is effectively cutting one processor in 3 though which in turn means a big processor.  Plus the problems @tech.guru mentioned. 

Edited March 17, 2021 by Bombastinator

[tdkid]

10 minutes ago, tech.guru said:

hes not talking about two separate computers hes talking about the video linus did awhile back using virtualization for this project.

 

you know where he had like 30k worth of graphics tried to spend a week getting it ready and ending up building separate systems anyways

i think i am done trying to explain this

[tech.guru]

its one of the things linus i guess wanted to show its "possible"

in summary this is what he did

 

he setup a single host as a hypervisor

      * he used pci passthrough to give the virtual machine access to the full video card and outputed the display of the virtual machine to a monitor

      * he used pci passthrough for a usb card to each virtual machine and hooked up a mouse and keyboard to control the virtual machine

      * sound used the hdmi of the grahics card to output the sound of the virtual machine to the monitor speakers

 

there are much better solutions for this but not for gaming. citrix xendesktop has done high end virtual desktops for ages and nvidia has offerings to enable this.

when you use citrix, you dont need all these physical connections you use either a regular pc or a thin client (low end device) to connect into the remote sessions running on the high end hardware over the network

 

in the enterprise you can have clusters of hundreds servers with high end graphic cards sharing 1000s of desktops for remote users. this isnt a solution for home use the economics and complexity just dont make sense.

 

so could this work.... answer is yes its done right for businesses who have a use case for it today.

 

did what linus did work?... i guess that depends on the definition of success, he doesnt use it and he recently tore it apart so yeah was a good idea in his head but it didnt make a whole lot of sense when he set it up and started understanding more the complexity and costs,

[curiousmind34]

1 hour ago, tech.guru said:

so to me this isnt really a mature technology and i dont see much value to do these 3 in 1 computers compared to going in separate builds.

first there is a lot of challenges,

              power requirements.... in order to dedicated graphics you need massive amounts of power to be able to power all these cards

              cooling......... you will have massive amounts of heat in a small enclosure with all those GPU inside a single case

              single point of failure.... while 3 separate systems would be there own single point of failure all three systems failing would be a lot less of a chance compared to everything in one unit

              costs... it may sound silly but it probably be more expensive to build a three graphic single system than three seperate systems. performance would also be worse

               * 6 core processor, (AMD ryzen 5 3600( is around $260. 3 of them is around $780

                  a 24 core processor (Threadripper 3960X) is around 1800 cad

              * 500 watt powersupply is about $65, * 3 is around  $195

               1600 watt powersupply is around $549

              * B550 motherboard is around $160 * 3 is 480, where as the sTRX4 is around $1000

 

and the big benifit sharing the graphics card? well thats not possible with consumer cards (nvidia locks these to telsa and enterprise offerings). in the enterpise cards  each virtual GPU requires its own license (vDWS) for Quadro (intended for autocad and not gaming would be poorly optimized) and is around $1000 per license!

 

you could share via a software driver on hypervisor (vSGA) but performance would be terrible. these are intended to share grahics using a generic driver for light 3d workload not demanding games expect terrible performance and unplayable games.

 

i just dont see any benefit to this setup. even in the enterprise we have much moved away from single monanthlic servers.... this is one advantages of virtualization is clustering.

 

now you could create a cluster of those three smaller machines and passthrough the graphics to a virtual machine (pci pass through) and use that virtual machine for gaming. however, you will find the maturity very low as gaming isnt a big driver for a lot of these hypervisors.

 

it would make however alot more sense than a single server. you could host other virtual machines with any spare memory and compute linux etc. if you dont like it you could just wipe the computers and install windows.

 

however i would  just say avoid the complexity and costs and go with 3 physical machines whether you decide to virtualize with a hypervisor or not. linus does a lot of things that doesnt make sense when you step back and look at things financially and practically.

hes a youtuber he creates entertaining content.

That's true. Contrary to normal economies of scale, higher end processors offer less performance per dollar, and would offer less single core performance. Plus, where would you mount the graphics cards. Even though it seems intuitive that bigger scale is better value, that is actually nor the case with computers.

[tech.guru]

and yes there is gaming streaming services too that also offer this today. you can consume the games on tablets or smart phones even and you will see the remote session.

 

but they dont allow simultaneous sharing of resources they designed to connect to a machine through a remote session optimized for low lag gaming.

 

in those cases you could have a pc on the network with the cards and games installed you wish to play. or you could buy into one of the many online gaming services that you pay a subscription service to rent or use the data server hardware for gaming.

 

[tech.guru]

36 minutes ago, tdkid said:

i think i am done trying to explain this

you dont need to explain its not what he was asking.

I understand how its works two separate computers in one case,

 

if you read his statement

you made a suggestion for something different.

Quote

I am assuming it will save myself the money of having one massive computer I am virtualizing, then buying repeated parts over and over again. One power supply, one motherboard, 1 cpu, 1 set of raid 1 nvme drives for OS(s), 1 set of raid 1 drives for data.

 

i already mentioned what he was talking about.

it was a youtube video linus did awhile ago.

i explained above how he did it. i explained why its a bad idea.

 

please lets be civil

[Final Blade]

Thanks everyone.

 

I will end the thread here.

 

Virtualization is not an issue for me, or the complexity of the build. I quite literally deal with virtualization on a daily basis. And I would enjoy the challenge

I am running at home a Dell R710 with 12 cores and 96gb of ram, for an amazing $250. I got it in January from someone who was moving and just needed it gone. Which was a great improvement over the the previous AMD phenom 2 with 16 GB of ram.

 

Finding out most likely the price would be more for a single pc to vitrualize, then to get 3 separate kind of makes the system plan a no go, or at least not a big price saving.

 

And to clarify: I would never just make a PC that has has multiple motherboards in one case. There is no point to that

 

Once again thank you everyone for your input, and this provided a bunch of information of the things I did not take into account for example:

5 hours ago, curiousmind34 said:

That's true. Contrary to normal economies of scale, higher end processors offer less performance per dollar, and would offer less single core performance. Plus, where would you mount the graphics cards. Even though it seems intuitive that bigger scale is better value, that is actually nor the case with computers.