jdmlight

I was thinking about running them off of the 512GB cache drive on a cache-only share. I will have a couple of extra SSD's as a part of this consolidation though, so if it's recommended to run the VM's off of their own SSD's I can certainly do that. The Blu-Ray drives are for my MakeMKV containers to rip my DVD/BD's for Plex. As far as the M1015, I remember that this was recommended as a faster alternative to onboard SATA. Granted, that advice was from when I originally built an UnRAID box ~8-10 years ago, so it may not apply anymore. I may keep it anyway for convenience - I've got 8 3.5" hot swap bays and 6 2.5" hot swap bays, plus the 2 Blu-Ray drives. So if I do keep the card, I could leave everything plugged in for ease of adding drives in the future.

Decided to go with the Frankenbuild option. I purchased one of the same motherboards that Lime Tech uses in their lab, the Asrock Z87 Professional: https://www.ebay.com/itm/ASRock-Fatal1ty-Z87-Professional-LGA-1150-HDMI-SATA-ATX-Intel-Gaming-Motherboard/142626520306?hash=item213533fcf2:g:vgkAAOSwLdBaNDRE Now to await its arrival, and continue on with this as a build thread. So I'm going to end up with the following specs after all is said and done: Rosewill RSV-R4000 Intel i7-4790k Noctua NH-D14 Asrock Z87 Professional 4x8GB DDR3 RAM IBM M1015 flashed to IT mode - I'm thinking about doing performance testing comparing this card to the onboard SATA ports to see if it's necessary. Radeon R9 270x for Gaming VM Radeon R7750 for Productivity VM 2x LG Blu-Ray Drives 1x 512GB Samsung Evo for cache 1x 2TB Toshiba P300 (parity) 1x 2TB WD EARX (might replace while I have everything open) 1x 2TB Seagate Barracuda ST2000 2x 1TB Hitachi HTS721010

I’m looking at consolidating my desktops, and potentially upgrading my unRAID setup in the process. My current unRAID setup is as follows: UnRAID 6.1.9 Asrock 970 Extreme4 1x8GB DDR3 RAM AMD FX-8150 IBM M1015 flashed to IT mode 2x LG Blu-ray drives 1x 2TB Toshiba P300 (parity) 1x 2TB WD EARX (plan to replace soon, it’s slow and old) 1x 2TB Seagate Barracuda ST2000 2x 1TB Hitachi HTS721010 1x 500GB WD5000BEVT (through Unassigned Devices plugin for Dockers storage) I currently use it for: Plex Handbrake MakeMKV Unifi Controller Backups of other computers General storage And everything has been running wonderfully for the past 6 years or so, with drive upgrades/replacements along the way. Only real hiccup I had was when I moved and broke off the USB stick. I replaced it with a Cruzer Fit so that doesn’t happen again. Now I’m looking at doing VMs to consolidate my computers a bit. My two other desktops are the following hardware: Gaming PC/HTPC Intel i7-4790k Asrock Z97E-ITX/ac Radeon R9 270x 2x8GB DDR3 512GB Samsung 960 Evo Productivity Desktop AMD FX-6300 Asrock 970 Extreme4 Radeon R7750 single-slot 1x8GB DDR3 RAM 256GB Samsung 960 Evo Running monitor and USB cables from my unRAID box to the other two locations will not be a problem. The productivity desktop is right adjacent to the closet with my unRAID server, and I have a bunch of Cat6 run to my family room that I can use for HDMI and USB extenders. So I’m thinking about three possible builds, from least expensive to most expensive upfront cost: Build 1 ($0): AMD FX-8150 Asrock 970 Extreme4 4x8GB DDR3 RAM (from various PCs) IBM M1015 flashed to IT mode 2x LG Blu-ray drives 512GB Samsung 960 Evo (install SSD as cache, move Dockers to cache, remove 500gb 2.5” drive) Radeon R9 270x for gaming PC VM Radeon 7750 for productivity VM Build 2 (~$100-150) Intel i7-4790k Purchase a used/refurbished socket 1150 motherboard, as new ones aren't available anymore 4x8GB DDR3 RAM IBM M1015 flashed to IT mode 2x LG Blu-ray drives 512GB Samsung 960 Evo (install SSD as cache, move Dockers to cache, remove 500gb 2.5” drive) Radeon R9 270x for gaming PC VM Radeon 7750 for productivity VM Build 3 ($700) New processor (~$300) New motherboard (~$200) 2x8GB DDR4 RAM (~$200) IBM M1015 flashed to IT mode (not sure if this would be necessary) 2x LG Blu-ray drives 512GB Samsung 960 Evo (install SSD as cache, move Dockers to cache, remove 500gb 2.5” drive) Radeon R9 270x for gaming PC VM Radeon 7750 for productivity VM And I would then sell the components that I’m not using, so I would recoup some of the cost. So this is essentially a CPU/motherboard question: do I keep the FX-8150 build as is, change to the i7-4790k and purchase a not-mITX motherboard, or go for all new? And if I do go for all new, what should I pick? My shortlist is the i7-8700k, Ryzen 1800x, or Xeon E3-1245v6 (with ECC RAM).