I have been looking into building a new server with unraid and either intel 5820k or 5930k processor. The question is ... will a 5930k processor allow me to passthrough more pci cards than the 5820k. I am aware that the 5820k only has 28 lanes compared to 40 with the 5930k but just not sure if that means 5930k will allow more devices to passthrough or not. Does more lanes mean better grouping with iomuu?

 

My goal is to have 2 windows 10 vm

One passing through radeon hd 5450 for kodi and cctv programs.

The other passing through another radeon 5450 gpu

Highpoint raid card

And usb 3.0 controller.

Do you think its possible to passthrough all of those cards with the 5820k or would i need the 5390k for this to work.

 

My setup would be:

Intel 5820k or 5930k cpu

ASRock ASRock Fatal1ty Gaming Fatal1ty X99X Killer

64gb gskill ripjaws 4 ddr4 ram

2 radeon hd5450 gpu

Highpoint 640 raid card

Usb 3 card

 

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks.

You don't NEED the extra lanes, they just allow additional lanes per PCIe slot.

If you look at the MB manual, you'll likely find a section that lays out the lanes per PCIe (16x length) for either the 28 lanes CPU or 40 lane CPU.

Since it doesn't look as if you'll be doing any gaming with 5450's, you have more than enough lanes from the CPU to support your needs (even with just 2 VM's you're good if you choose to regardless, however at that point upgrade your GPU 1st).

Without looking I'd assume if you have 4 PCIe 16x (length) slots, the 28 lanes would be divided as 16/4/4/4 or 8/8/8/4.

For HD playback and basic 2d/3d tasks, even a 1X lane is sufficient.

Grouping for IOMMU will not be an issue, as it comes directly from the CPU which supports ACS.

 

The rest of your expansion slots (1x) will likely come from your MB connections, and those will also be in there own separate IOMMU groups also.

 

Edit: One other thing. In my testing with an Asus 5450 card, it was a P.I.T.A., P.O.S. and I should have pulled an Office Space (the movie; that copier had it coming!) on it.

However there are other users who use the 5450 with very good results.

This could be a manufacturer/BIOS thing, as Asus supposedly has had some finicky GPU's (for virtualizing from what I read at that time).

Anyhow, you've been warned, and if you do have issues after installing drivers, performing VM resets, or powering back on a VM from a previous on/off state, I'd throw it at the wall, or someone you don't like....  (Damn I wish I could get that wasted time back! :'( )

I tested this same GPU in 2 seperate Z97 MB's, and my current X99 with the same results (however on the X99 it worked OK in Openelec.. odd).

Thanks alot for all the info. You just saved me 190$. as for the 5450 cards, i was able to pass both of them through without an issue on a gigabyte ud3 board with a amd 8350 processor. but they are made by Sapphire and Diamond. i did however have an issue with openelec. with the diamond 5450 gpu i wasnt able to reset the machine. it would freeze unraid up completely. but a windows 10 vm with the diamond 5450 card passing through worked fine. i had no issues with rebooting the vm, thats the only reason why i am choosing to run kodi in windows 10 instead of openelec. I wasnt sure if it was a bug or my card causing the problem but i gave up on it bc it worked with windows 10 vm .. so I dunno whats up there.

 

quick follow up question, how difficult would it be to passthrough onboard usb ports with the intel 5820k processor? bc it has acs support does it make passing though onboard usb ports easier? i have the Rosewill BlackHawk-Ultra Full Tower case and want to be able to utilize all the usb ports on the front from within my windwos 10 vm. just wondering if i should waste time trying to passthough usb ports or buy a usb card and passthough the entire controller. thanks

This is more motherboard dependent, as the split between the XHCI and EHCI controller can be different (integrated into the chipset).

This can also involve additional USB ports that may be provided by an additional I.C.. (look at your manual for this, 4 of my rear ports come from another add on IC (I believe ASMedia))

It is also dependent on settings in the BIOS, as some can coax the controller to come up as separate device.

For the most part though, yes you can split it, and yes they will be in their own IOMMU grouping as listed, but you'll have to play with that a bit.

Currently with my BIOS settings, I only see 1 USB controller, however I know if I toggle the "handoff" for EHCI or XHCI I can get this to look as 3 separate controllers, which are in their own IOMMU grouping.

 

This is more motherboard dependent, as the split between the XHCI and EHCI controller can be different (integrated into the chipset).

This can also involve additional USB ports that may be provided by an additional I.C.. (look at your manual for this, 4 of my rear ports come from another add on IC (I believe ASMedia))

It is also dependent on settings in the BIOS, as some can coax the controller to come up as separate device.

For the most part though, yes you can split it, and yes they will be in their own IOMMU grouping as listed, but you'll have to play with that a bit.

Currently with my BIOS settings, I only see 1 USB controller, however I know if I toggle the "handoff" for EHCI or XHCI I can get this to look as 3 separate controllers, which are in their own IOMMU grouping.

 

Bungee, saw your sig on another post and it piqued my interest as its just what I was considering...  Some Qs if I may...

 

Do your VMs running Win10 all run simultaneously with no audio glitches (with/without MSI fix?) I still get occasional glitches on my current 4790K with single "2 core" VM. Wondering if 5930K is enough for 3 HTPC VMs at same time...

 

USB as above - is that a total of only 3 controllers with Handoff set to which setting? I guess that would be "just" enough for 3 VMs to have a USB controller each.... would rather have a 4th for the "host UnRAID" so I guess that is why you added a USB PCIE?

 

Why no overclock for extra headroom?

Bungee, saw your sig on another post and it piqued my interest as its just what I was considering...  Some Qs if I may...

 

Do your VMs running Win10 all run simultaneously with no audio glitches (with/without MSI fix?) I still get occasional glitches on my current 4790K with single "2 core" VM. Wondering if 5930K is enough for 3 HTPC VMs at same time...

 

USB as above - is that a total of only 3 controllers with Handoff set to which setting? I guess that would be "just" enough for 3 VMs to have a USB controller each.... would rather have a 4th for the "host UnRAID" so I guess that is why you added a USB PCIE?

 

Why no overclock for extra headroom?

 

HDMI audio, no glitches! All cards have the MSI interrupt enabled using the easy to use MSI_UTIL app attached to another of my posts (somewhere around here; I didn't make this app).

The analog on-board I pass as a 2nd sound device on my primary VM is a mixed bag, mainly just signalling noise/interference related.

 

As for OC, not really needed as each VM is mainly pulling HTPC duties, and I think the key to this (primarily) is core isolation (prevents missed pre-fetching for CPU cache) and fast disc access.

That I'm pleased with in having 6 actual cores to assign, with some less important ones sharing a little (headless, and dockers/UnRAID) as I do not notice any impact due to not directly interacting with a mouse, or something that easily indicates lag. Also, I have never tried isolating CPU's from unRAID, using the isolcpus= in my syslinux.cfg file (never seen the need).

 

My USB controllers suck, but my statement still holds true. 

 

I can get mine to come up as 3 controllers, all in their own IOMMU grouping, however NONE, and I mean NONE of the USB ports, headers (USB 3.0 and 1.1/2.0) ever have devices connect to the other controllers! I tested most all combinations for the 3 that effect this on my board (XHCI handoff, EHCI Handoff, & XHCI Mode), with the same results, it is odd.

I do know I have an add on built in USB controller, however the BIOS (likely) doesn't properly address this as a separate device (in one way or another, they just act as one happy family).

I just recently (2 days ago) dug into this, and came up with those results.

So for me, I have an add-on TI USB 3 card passed to my primary VM, and the other 3 (with hardware passthrough, headless has nothing assigned) all have the USB devices assigned by the VM editor. This works fine, as the only devices (primarily) are Media remotes, which I never unplug.

If I did have the need, I'd likely try the plugin for USB hotplugging that others have said good things about.

 

One more thing: I also get a lot of these kinds of messages (varying usb device ID) "usb 1-9.2: ep 0x81 - rounding interval to 64 microframes, ep desc says 80 microframes" in my syslog, sometimes more frequent than others, some times not at all. The from (64) to (80) also vary by device. I do believe these messages when occurring cause lag in my VM from a usb perspective (glitchy mouse is the most noticeable). This is something I need to troubleshoot, and was partly why I performed as many combinations of the above 3 USB BIOS settings hoping to resolve, which I did not. So anyhow, things are working, and pretty damn well, but I want to tell you the entire picture.

Hope it helps!