Video card dilemma

[Blastermaster]

I'll start off by saying I'm an impatient canadian idiot.

I decided to dive into unRAID after seeing that Linus Tech Tips video with 2x GPU pass through. I figured if I'd be building a NAS I might as well make it a gaming machine as well.

I searched around for smallish cases, fell in love with the NODE 804 and jumped on a black friday sale without thinking about everything else.

Found out later, that there are very few microATX motherboards that support VT-D. Settled with GA-Z97MX-Gaming 5.

With the Canadian dollar being so crummy, I looked through eBay to find a used Xeon processor. Found a great one at a great price! But... it doesn't have a built in GPU.

 

Now the motherboard supports PCI-E x16 x1 x8 and x4. Ideally I would be using the x16 slot for the main GPU running windows but I also need a separate video card to utilize unRAID, yes?

If possible I'd also would want to run a Linux distro along side the Windows distro. That would require another video card as well?

 

Are there any inexpensive (eBay?) video cards that are x1 x8 or x4 PCIE compatible?

Will a x16 card work in an x8 or x4 slot but just poorly?

 

The x1 video cards I did find are VERY expensive for their performance Visiontek Radeon 4350.

 

Is is PCIE x1-> PCI adapter a good solution? Amfeltec has one

 

The 2nd & 3rd video cards don't really need any performance.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[De1taE1even]

What about this little guy?  http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500355

 

Also, for your full-lane pci-e slots, you should be able to stick an "x16" card in them, even if they only run in x8 or x4 mode.  You'll just lose some performance.

[bungee91]

UnRAID doesn't require a GPU, you should be able to boot with a card, and then "steal" it away from UnRAID for your use within a VM. If this is the primary GPU, as of now that is recommended to be an AMD GPU, as Nvidia is said to have an issue being the primary card, and being repurposed for a VM.

If you need to purchase a GPU, keep in mind some cards (especially the newer AMD ones) have reset issues that can make virtualizing them troublesome, so definitely research prior to choosing one.