Help me split my dekstop PC in two stations

Nihil · May 14, 2016

Hello,

after spending hours looking for the solution online, I've come here to get some ideas. Basically I don't have any experience with virtualization, so I mostly need someone to point me in the right direction and to give me the "Dos and dont's" on the subject.

I'd like to turn my desktop PC in two stations:

1st station - Gaming/Work station
2nd station - Media center/NAS

I'd like both to have a separate set of inputs (keyboard, mouse, optionally network) and dedicated outputs (video, audio, can do both via HDMI). By dedicated outputs I mean every station using the exact output. If possible, I'd like both to be able to access the internal and external storage disks. Gaming/Work station would run windows (7 or 10) and Media center/NAS would run Ubuntu (or some other Linux distro).

Now, before you point me to Linus' multistation build/tutorial videos, let me note that I've seen and considered using Unraid, but I'd still like to explore my options and have someone say "Unraid is the way to go" or "Unraid is just not going to cut it for you".

I tried the simplest approach - using VirtualBox - but I didn't see this kind of virtualization come anywhere close to what I want.

My current rig specs are:

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 5
CPU: Intel i7-4790K
RAM: 16GB (2x 8GB DDR3)
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX750 Ti
Disks
- 240GB SSD (sata3; main OS)
- 120GB SSD (sata3; used to be Ubuntu, now meant for the Media center/NAS)
- 4 internal storage disks (sata3)
- 4 external storage disks (2x USB2.0, 2x USB3.0)
OS: 64-bit Windows 7

Hardware upgrades are acceptable.

Questions are:

Can I even make this work?
Would I need two graphics cards in order to truly separate and dedicate the outputs?
- Could this be done by Media center/NAS station using onboard graphics?
Would Unraid be suitable for this?
- What are the alternatives or more suitable solutions?
Would it make more sense to just build another PC for Media center/Nas?

Any kind of thoughts, suggestions and pointers are welcome and appreciated