Motherboard advice (specifically USB passthrough flexibility)

[johngc]

I currently have a B450 Tomahawk Max with a Ryzen 7 3700x and have successfully been running two VMs (MacOS and Win 10) that can be used simultaneously with two graphics cards, monitors keyboards etc.

 

My use situation is the two monitors / keyboards are used to dock work laptops but then I have a keyboard switch on each to allow the same keyboard / mouse to be used on a VM under Unraid. As the VM's don't really cope with hot plugging of USB devices properly  I need the USB controller passed through to each machine.

 

Recently I got an Oculus Rift and a PCIe USB card which was passed through to the Windows 10 using the VFIO PCI config options. The size of the graphics cards and PCI slot locations means that I can't plug anymore cards in.

 

I need most USB ports for the Windows 10 machine so have passed through the PCI USB3 card as above and then pass through individual devices for each VM machine.

 

The actual motherboard seems to only have two USB groups available to split out and pass through. I keep one for the Unraid USB and this groups also has most of the other USB ports attached so individual peripherals devices which I can pass through and the second, smaller one which if I try and pass through ends up crashing my system and causing all sorts of corruption issues!

 

I need to pass through a group to each VM so the keyboard switch can be used on each (and cope with hot plugging). 

 

Can any one suggest a motherboard that either can accept more PCI cards (and so another USB3 controller card) or preferably that is more configurable in terms of VFIO PCI groups.

 

I hope that makes sense!

[SimonF]

It may not resolve your issues of needing another PCIe USB Card but have you looked at my Plugin for USB devices? Its call USBIP at present but I plan to rename to USB Manager.

 

 

[johngc]

I hadn't seen this! You developers keep raising the bar and I can't keep up sometimes 🙂

 

Thank you - I will have a look. I had previously been using he Libvert HotPlug USB plugin but that needed me to physically add the devices each time which caused me a few issues when I was at work and the kids needed the computer!

 

Could save me buying a new MB. Thank you