Miniaturized-virtualisation-gaming box

[grumbling.sun.bear]

Linus, Luke, John - if you’re out there, can you hear me calling?

 

tl;dr: Does that AsRoc ITX x99 board support VT-d? Is the 5900 series if Core-i processors going to work with it (VT-d?

 

If anyone else knows, can you help me out?

 

1. Budget & Location
 

My budget is variable, and the shipping costs are my own concern.  Basically, whatever it takes to complete the build.

 

Location is Bermuda (The island in the middle of the Atlantic)

2. Aim

 

Build a small (for portability and coolness factor), Linux based hypervisor for running everything from:

 

A private mirror package repository for raspbian and other linux flavours

 

A steam (on windows) gaming box (needs vt-d support)

 

Emulation stuff that can't be handled by retroarch on a pi

 

NAS controller (and possibly storage. Will be using Ceph to link multiple storage locations)

 

Maybe even VDI for my SO.

3. Monitors

 

I have all I need. There will be a 1080p dell for regular gaming, a 1080p TV for emulation and a 4k screen for testing, a bit of content creation, 3d modeling and possibly gaming.

4. Peripherals

None needed at the moment, I have my trusty Apple USB keyboard and ssh for all configurations.

5. Why are you upgrading?

I don't have a desktop at the moment.  I thought about running with an eGPU setup on my macbook pro and bootcamping windows 10, but experience has broken me down and demands at the very least a dedicated machine for this. I may split it out in the future, but for now, this is what I’m going with.  

 

I want more than just gaming, I’m tired of kludges and virtualisation is my business - so I get to flesh out my professional knowledge whilst building a sweet hypervisor for personal profit!

 

I've wanted to try out VT-d with graphics for a long time, but never could get used to the form factor of having a honking great big tower somewhere near me, as opposed to in a datacenter somewhere.

 

LTT gets full credit for tickling my inner nerd enough to move ahead with this.

 

Inspirations:

 

My inspirations for this build were “2 gamers one CPU” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuJYMCbIbPk, “7 gamers 1 CPU”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXOaCkbt4lI and “The MOST Compact Gaming PC” https://youtu.be/MjDJNwAANwA

 

Hardware:

 

I have already purchased the Silverstone sg13 mesh as used in the LTT video “The MOST Compact Gaming PC”

 

I have gone with the Silverstone 80+ Gold 600W SFX power supply.

 

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The Remainder

 

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I’m currently looking at:

 

The AsRoc mini itx x99 motherboard

 

The 59xx series of processors (which combination of mobo and CPU is going to give me vt-d and the gaming performance I need)

 

Titan X over 980ti

 

I may possibly wait for the Pascal line up to have a few options as well.

 

 (I have an old EVGA 660ti to tide me over until I can afford either of the cards, so price doesn't really factor in this decision)

 

----

 

So here’s where I am so far.  Between listings on wikipedia and Intel ARK for which CPU’s support VT-d I have leanerd:

 

The 5920k will

The 5930k will

The 5960x will

 

The motherboard appears to.

 

The problem lies in that, RMA’ing from Bermuda or even just returns would really suck (if they'd even take an open box CPU back)

 

Has anyone tried VT-d with this board, does it work?

 

 I would really like the NVMe slot and 3.1 USB slots for 10GBit networking, but will downgrade if I have to.

 

Cheers!

sunbear

Edited March 26, 2016 by grumbling.sun.bear
Font issues when posting from mobile, can't see the selector (changed from desktop)

[mikat]

please decrease your font size 

[grumbling.sun.bear]

6 minutes ago, mikat said:

please decrease your font size 

Sorry, that font size was pretty obnoxious. Thanks for letting me know - The size drop down wasn't visible on the mobile version, which is where I posted from!