Please Help, Any Suggestions for a motherboard that works well with an Intel I7 7700K????

Hello.

The guys from the unraid support, suggested that I come here.

That you guy’s might have a better knowledge in good CPU motherboard combinations.

 

I am new to unraid I am not to confident on editing codes. This is my first unraid build which is meant to be the family NAS plus my own PC as a VM. This is where the problem lies.

 

My background with computers, has been around since I was at school due to my vision difficulty the school decided to lend me one of the schools old laptops. This had to look at the resources to enable the external speech synthesizer to run alongside the OS and the screen magnifier at the same time. Since then I have been adjusting computers since. To this end I am having to transfer back from apple since there newer OSX’s have become less and less accessible, I would consider Linux if it was able to run the more mainstream software suite and fonts more easterly, but the windows environment may not be the best but there are lot of accessibility support by third party software.  I have put PC to together and get them up and running for friends and family but this was in an aid to help my self.

Hence why unraid was a no brainer, user friendly NAS side with the addition of powerful virtualisation software to boot.

 

The server so far:

CPU: intel i7 7700k (looking at 2 cores for unraid and 2 for a VM).

Motherboard: ASrock Z270 Taichi.

Ram: HyperX Fury 2666mhz (dialled back to 2400mhz This was my first head ache). Made of a 32Gb and 16Gb kit.

32Gb for the unraid NAS and 16Gb for the VM.

Power Supply: Originally an Corsair 850watt RMI now a 1000watt RMI. (Unraid support thinking originally ther server lock up and freeze was a power draw issue).

Graphics: the intel on boards graphics &

Originally an Sapphire AMD Raideon RX580 8Gb.

Now a EVGA Nvida GTX 1070ti SC 8Gb.

NOTE: I am limited to the 6-8Gb video memory as Zoom text requires a minium of 4Gb and Photoshop suite of applications require 2GB which leave 2gb for the OS and potential head room.

Drives:

2x 14Tb Seagate Iron Wolf Pro’s (as Parity).

2x 2Tb Samsung QVO SATA SSD’s (as array cache).

6X 10Tb Seagate Iron Wolfs (as Data array).

Managed with the on board 10 port SATA 3 controller.

1x 1Tb Samsung 970qvo NVME (Via PCIe adaptor card, for a Windows10 VM (priority)).

1x 500Gb Samsung 970qvo NVME (Via PCIe adaptor card, for a Linux VM (hopefully)).

1x 5 port USB3 PCIe card.

And the USB 2 Unraid USB key.

 

Aim:

Future proof the array possibly adding more drives, way, way down the line.

And having a windows10 VM as my own desktop PC running in the same case.

With looking at having another vm on the 500GB running Linux more likely a version of Mint.

A would like to have is a older version of Apple Mac OSX but not essential.

But these Vm’s will ever only be active one at a time I cannot see me running one at a time anyway. Usage case graphic’s editing, light video editing, audio file conversion, DVD copying for house hold use ie copy all the DVD’s at home and put them on the array to free up physical space in the house. Word processing and internet browsing. Just with the video memory hog of a accessibility tool.

 

The issue I am having at the moment is regarding the VM’s

I cannot get one to boot and be reliable.

The AMD card, I can install windows it will go black screen as the video driver starts to install and is non retrievable here on after. This also occurs after 20mins of VM runtime. But I have experienced a black screen if I power down the VM and the server, it seems whatever connection was made to the GPU is after the server reboot is broken.

The Unraid support team. Asked me to switch to an Nvida RTX/GTX card hence the purchase of the 2nd EVGA card which is still a problem for the GTX 10 series.

And this has never produced a video signal just black screen after one another even if I boot the VM and try to access it via a remote connection, it is just the same black screen. The card works on bare metal PC’s in fact both cards the AMD and Nvida run fine in that instance. It is just stops working when the GPU is Passed through in unraid to the VM?

I have already:

Set the primary video to onboard.

Enabled the Vrt D and Vrt X

Enabled above 4G

Got the server booting in legacy.

Edited the nvidia gpu’s bios rom file, and passed it through.

Made sure that both video and audio are passed through on the same virtual slot.

Both tried I440FX v4.2 and Q35 v4.2 machine types for both cards.

 

The whole Vm side has turned into a nightmare, I swear I might of lost my mind on occasion, trying to figure this out.

Talk about jumping into the deep end!

 

So, now the unraid support team is thinking it is the motherboard CPU combination. I managed to get one suggested on a known good combination been a gigabyte H270M-D3SH-CF.

 

So, I am looking at seeking a known good motherboard with the 7700K for £200-300?

Plus, since I will be losing the 10 SATA ports I will need to look at ether a handful of SATA PCIe cards or an HBA which I do not know how to reflashed into the “IT Mode”?

Or are they available preflashed?

 

Or worst case senerio of sell the taichi and 7700k and get an 8th gen or 9th gen intel cpu and motherboard, for the £500 mark.

In this case any known good combinations of an i7 there is no way of me acquiring a i9 CPU.it is out of budget.

In this case I would be looking for a 4 or more core around the high 3.*Ghz – 4.1/2/3Ghz type of processor.

 

Please any help, advice, part combinations welcome….