Hello All, I have become interested in building computers in the last year and recently Purchased all the components needed to build a gaming rig for my home, after purchasing all these items I was going to start saving to build my own NAS as well, I watched LinusTechTips' video on having a NAS and Computer in the same case and wondered if any of you can help me out by seeing what hardware I will need to run unRaid if it is at all possible to do with the components I have, here is the list of items with respective prices (In Pounds):

 

Processor: Intel Core i5 4690K Processor = £169.50

Motherboard: MSI Z97 PC Mate Intel LGA1150 Z97 ATX Motherboard (6 Sata Data Ports, 4 DDR3 Ram Slots) = £64.99

Ram: Corsair 8GB (2x 4GB) 1600Mhz = £35.88

Power Supply: Corsair Builder Series CX 600 Watt = £44.74

Graphics Card: Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti Graphics Card (2GB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 3.0) = £94.98

Case: Zalman Z11 Plus ATX PC Case Black = £45.00

SSD:  SanDisk SSD PLUS 120 GB = £34.95

HDD:WD Black 2TB Hard Drive = £75.00

Wireless Mouse and keyboard £19.95

Windows 7 Home Premium OS = Owned

Several USB sticks or differing sizes = Owned

Wired Keyboard = Owned

Monitor (single VGA Port): Owned, will eventually buy BenQ GL2250HM 21.5 inch LED backlit monitor (Hdmi, DVI-D and VGA Ports) = £82.50

Total Expenditure so far: £584.99 (667.50 after monitor)

 

I'm going to be buying an extra SSD so that I can use them as a cache and I will be getting several more HDDs in the near future.

 

So my Questions are:

1. Can my system run unRaid to have both a computer and NAS in one Case?

If 1 is true

2. What extra Hardware do I need to get the system running?

3. Should I buy a Ice Dock 3.5" Trayless bay for more drive storage

4.When I buy my HDDs, do they have to be WD Black 2tb also or can I get some  WD Reds or even Greens and Blues of different sizes?

 

Any other information would be much appreciated so please let me know. I hope this is posted in the right place

Thank You for your time,

dand324

 

 

 

According to the mobo manual it supports VMs, and of course that CPU does.

 

One of the great things about unRAID is you can mix drives however you want including different sizes.

 

You only have 1 HDD listed so if you want parity (you should) you will need another at least as large. Personally I wouldn't bother with a 2TB unless you already own it. Larger sizes give more TB/$ on this side of the pond, not sure about TB/£ where you are but probably larger is better.

Ok that's great thank you very much!

 

I'm looking to get double the RAM, Three 3tb HDDs using one as parity is the idea right?

 

I was wondering what the difference in putting Windows 7 on first the unRaid or unRaid then the Windows 7 if there's a difference at all, because I don't want to lose either OS on instalation of the other one

...

I was wondering what the difference in putting Windows 7 on first the unRaid or unRaid then the Windows 7 if there's a difference at all, because I don't want to lose either OS on instalation of the other one

I would be very surprised if you could come up with any way to boot into Windows and get unRAID to run on the same machine. The idea is to boot unRAID from its flash drive and then setup a Windows VM running in KVM on unRAID.

Ah sorry I'll explain myself, I am out of money at this present time and so while waiting for enough money to get the remaining parts I was going to install my Windows 7 OS and then later download unRaid and put it into my system. I believe I would lose my windows Operating system if I format the disks so I was wondering what's the best way to go about it?

 

Also say I had totally finished this whole project and had my Windows VM running fine, am I locked out of doing any other technical operation such as using two monitors and double booting two operating systems or is it all just a case of limitations in hardware. Because I would like to use dual monitors at some point either with this specific rig or another one in the future with the same system.

 

Lastly, I purchased the WD Black HDD to store games and possibly run them on it, would this be possible if it is part of the array and if not can you keep certain HDDs out of the array but still use them.

 

Thank you so much for the help this is really putting my mind at ease.

dand324

 

 

Ah sorry I'll explain myself, I am out of money at this present time and so while waiting for enough money to get the remaining parts I was going to install my Windows 7 OS and then later download unRaid and put it into my system. I believe I would lose my windows Operating system if I format the disks so I was wondering what's the best way to go about it?

I quit using VMs after docker got going in early V6 betas since I just wanted apps to run on my server and not another complete OS. Maybe someone else will comment, or take a look at the KVM subforum and maybe ask there. Might be possible to mount the Windows OS disk outside the array and run it that way.

Also say I had totally finished this whole project and had my Windows VM running fine, am I locked out of doing any other technical operation such as using two monitors and double booting two operating systems or is it all just a case of limitations in hardware. Because I would like to use dual monitors at some point either with this specific rig or another one in the future with the same system.

You're confusing me again with this talk of double booting. You really need to boot into unRAID and keep unRAID running all the time so it can maintain parity, and then run whatever additional OS(es) you want as VMs. If you really want to boot Windows instead of unRAID then none of the unRAID storage can be used while it isn't running.

 

As for dual monitors, unRAID itself does not need a monitor except perhaps for troubleshooting bootup. It is managed through a web interface, and any command line stuff you may need in addition to that can be done in telnet/ssh. I run mine headless (no monitor or keyboard).

 

VMs can also be run headless depending on what you need them to do. Some people just use RDP to access their VMs. If you want gaming you will probably need a real video output. Any VM that needs video out will need its own dedicated graphics card. Any builtin mobo video can't be used for a VM.

 

Lastly, I purchased the WD Black HDD to store games and possibly run them on it, would this be possible if it is part of the array and if not can you keep certain HDDs out of the array but still use them.

 

Thank you so much for the help this is really putting my mind at ease.

dand324

Drives can be mounted outside the array. Any drive that is part of the array will take a performance hit when writing so parity can be updated.

Ah sorry I'll explain myself, I am out of money at this present time and so while waiting for enough money to get the remaining parts I was going to install my Windows 7 OS and then later download unRaid and put it into my system. I believe I would lose my windows Operating system if I format the disks so I was wondering what's the best way to go about it?

 

Also say I had totally finished this whole project and had my Windows VM running fine, am I locked out of doing any other technical operation such as using two monitors and double booting two operating systems or is it all just a case of limitations in hardware. Because I would like to use dual monitors at some point either with this specific rig or another one in the future with the same system.

 

Lastly, I purchased the WD Black HDD to store games and possibly run them on it, would this be possible if it is part of the array and if not can you keep certain HDDs out of the array but still use them.

 

Thank you so much for the help this is really putting my mind at ease.

dand324

 

If you want to have a NAS + gaming machine, then you need to run unRAID as your primary OS (via a flash drive). As noted, you can then make a VM (win7/10/etc) in that OS, then boot that.

 

If you want to have it be as close to bare metal performance as possible, then you want to pass your current video card through and give the VM exclusive access to it. This means that unRAID won't have a video card at all. This is fine, since your mb/cpu has built in intel video (and a vga port for your current monitor).

 

Since you only have one hdd right now, you'd use it as your primary data drive, and it would also need to store the VM. Ideally, you'd want to use an SSD to store things like VM images, dockers, other misc apps (for unRAID), etc. That would leave your other disks for your storage array, to store files/movies/games/etc.

 

Once you get unRAID up and going (easy, but i'd find some more hdds, spring for an spare SSD for VM/etc storage), you just run your VM(s) to do your normal stuff. Since you'll do a win7 vm, you'll just boot it, connect to it, and use it like a normal computer. Need to restart, just restart it. unRAID will never stop running/etc. Want to try out win10? no problem, just start a new VM, and boot into that. Want to learn linux? Just start a linux VM. Can they all run at the same time? Sure, if your hardware will support that. Can they all share the video card....well no, thats the tricky stuff.

 

So you'll want to do something called passthrough for your video card (the 750) and for some usb ports/controller. This is also called IMMOU, and for intel, it needs VT-d support (cpu/motherboard). Then you assign the devices (the 750 and some usb for your keyboard/mouse) directly to the VM, and only the VM can access them. (this gives you a dedicated keyboard/mouse for unRAID (not that you need it) and one for your VM/etc. Then you should be able to get near perfect gaming performance from the VM. You can also assign the video card to another VM later, but you might need to reboot/etc to actually make that swap (like if you wanted the 750 to be available to a win7 vm and a win10 vm, though only ever one at a time).  BTW, you can always have another VM with an emulated video card, it just won't be fast for gaming, etc.

 

For dual monitors, if you pass the 750 through to the VM, then it can support as many monitors as it normally would, so you can still have your win7 vm (on the 750) and dual monitors. If you wanted to have like 5 displays, and needed additional video cards to support them, then they'd all have to get passed through, and now you are just getting overly complicated

 

Your 2TB wd black will make a great parity drive, except that it is only 2TB. If you wanted to buy bigger drives later (say a few nice 4TB drives) then you also need your parity to be 4TB. But you could easily buy 2 4TB hdds, make one parity, one data, and move the 2tb to data, and still have 6TB of storage space.

 

All in all, I think you'll learn a few things if you move forward with this, and to me, that's always worth trying it out.

Hello All, I have become interested in building computers in the last year and recently Purchased all the components needed to build a gaming rig for my home, after purchasing all these items I was going to start saving to build my own NAS as well, I watched LinusTechTips' video on having a NAS and Computer in the same case and wondered if any of you can help me out by seeing what hardware I will need to run unRaid if it is at all possible to do with the components I have, here is the list of items with respective prices (In Pounds):

 

Processor: Intel Core i5 4690K Processor = £169.50

Motherboard: MSI Z97 PC Mate Intel LGA1150 Z97 ATX Motherboard (6 Sata Data Ports, 4 DDR3 Ram Slots) = £64.99

Ram: Corsair 8GB (2x 4GB) 1600Mhz = £35.88

Power Supply: Corsair Builder Series CX 600 Watt = £44.74

Graphics Card: Asus Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti Graphics Card (2GB, GDDR5, PCI-Express 3.0) = £94.98

Case: Zalman Z11 Plus ATX PC Case Black = £45.00

SSD:  SanDisk SSD PLUS 120 GB = £34.95

HDD:WD Black 2TB Hard Drive = £75.00

Wireless Mouse and keyboard £19.95

Windows 7 Home Premium OS = Owned

Several USB sticks or differing sizes = Owned

Wired Keyboard = Owned

Monitor (single VGA Port): Owned, will eventually buy BenQ GL2250HM 21.5 inch LED backlit monitor (Hdmi, DVI-D and VGA Ports) = £82.50

Total Expenditure so far: £584.99 (667.50 after monitor)

 

I'm going to be buying an extra SSD so that I can use them as a cache and I will be getting several more HDDs in the near future.

 

So my Questions are:

1. Can my system run unRaid to have both a computer and NAS in one Case?

If 1 is true

2. What extra Hardware do I need to get the system running?

3. Should I buy a Ice Dock 3.5" Trayless bay for more drive storage

4.When I buy my HDDs, do they have to be WD Black 2tb also or can I get some  WD Reds or even Greens and Blues of different sizes?

 

Any other information would be much appreciated so please let me know. I hope this is posted in the right place

Thank You for your time,

dand324

 

 

 

hi, have you been able to install unraid and the vms?

cause i have the same cpu and i want to make a nas from my main pc, but my only concern is if the cpu can handle all that stress (i want to build a gaming vm and use some dockers, like plex torrent and others)

also i would like to build a second windows 10 vm for other people in the house (only for chrome and word, no gaming)

 

do you (and others on the community) think my cpu can handle that?

 

thanks