I think about using Unraid on my Maincomputer using https://de.msi.com/Motherboard/B450-A-PRO-MAX, AMD 3900x and 64Gb Ram and 4x 8TB 5400 WD Drives and 2x 1TB SSD and 1x 2TB NVMe.

- Can I still run Windows 11 from my 2TB NVMe?
- What is the performance loss when I run Windows 11 as a VM?

What I like a lot about unraid is that:
- I do not have to have another computer to maintain and pay electricity
- benefit from parity and having all drives there instead of a lot spread around the house
- silent drives when not in use
- maybe automate offloading from filmprojects when attaching ssds

But what I do not need is:
- other functions of unraid like plugins
- and additional VM

So maybe you suggest to forget this idea.

I would add what exactly you do with your main computer, gaming? Competitive gaming? Video/photo editing? Ect.

 

I have my server running with a 12600k, 3 1tb nvme drives, 6 4tb HDD. I use it for storage, Plex and supporting arr's, plus a dedicated windows 10 VM that runs 100% of the time that the wife uses 8-10 hours a day for work for mainly basic computing type tasks (Excell, word, browsing, video conferencing, email, ect.). I only have the VM using 4 cores 8 threads and 12GB of RAM, one NVME dedicated to it, a pcie usb card passed through (as I could not pass through any of the ones from my motherboard due to IOMMU groupings), and a little GT 1030 passed through for video. I have not performed any performance testing but she has not noticed any day to day use performance differences from when she was using my bare metal 5900x/RTX 3080 gaming PC of which there is obviously a drastic difference to. I have also played around a little with the VM before handing it over to her for work and it felt snappy and responsive during all the day to day type tasks I put it through when testing. 

 

So I would say it greatly depends on use case for the VM, and how much of the available resources you let it use. But there are people out there doing full gaming VM's off an unraid server with minimal performance differences from what I have heard, have not tried or done this myself. 

2 hours ago, MadMatt337 said:

I would add what exactly you do with your main computer, gaming? Competitive gaming? Video/photo editing? Ect.

90% webdevelopment and 10% a bit of Audio/video/photo editing. My main video editing machine is a different one.

Is there an easy onboarding solution to move a harddrive with Windows 10 or 11 to a VM? That would be a great feature for beginners.

17 minutes ago, root_is_my_friend said:

Is there an easy onboarding solution to move a harddrive with Windows 10 or 11 to a VM? That would be a great feature for beginners.

 

Lots of different resources out there if you do a quick Google search. 

 

https://wiki.lime-technology.com/UnRAID_Manual_6#Physical_to_Virtual_Machine_Conversion_Process

 

http://kmwoley.com/blog/convert-a-windows-installation-into-a-unraid-kvm-virtual-machine/