Hey there,

 

I've been planning to do this for a while now and I finally got around to trying out unRAID. After trying it out over the weekend to confirm all the hardware, I purchased the unRAID Plus license. I didn't start the build from scratch, but used my desktop PC with a couple of additions along the way.

 

Idea behind the "build" is to make a single computer to be used as a NAS home server, Media center and a desktop for me and my girlfriend.

 

OS at time of building: Windows 7 Pro

 

CPU:

Intel Core i7-4790K (quad-core w/ hyperthreading)

+ CPU cooler: Arctic Freezer Xtreme Rev.2

Motherboard:

Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 5

RAM:

16 32 GB DDR3

2x 4x 8 GB Kingston HyperX Fury DDR3-1866

Graphics card(s):

MSI GeForce GTX 970 GAMING 4G

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 750 Ti Black Edition OC WindForce

Case:

BitFenix Shinobi Core Window

+ NZXT Sentry 2 Fan controller

+ NZXT Lightning kit White

DVD drive:

Samsung SH-224DB

Power Supply:

650 W LC-Power Silent Giant LC6650GP3 ATX2.3 (to be upgraded in the future)

SATA Expansion Card(s):

Digitus DS-30104-1 SATA3 Controller (4 additional SATA inputs)

Fans:

Motherboard controlled:

  1x Coolermaster Cooler Master JetFlo (red LED) [120 mm, exhaust rear]

  1x BitFenix Spectre PWM Black [120 mm, intake side]

NZXT Sentry 2 controlled:

  3x Arctic Cooling Arctic F12 [120 mm, 2x intake front, 1x intake bottom]

  2x BitFenix Spectre PRO (red LED) [140 mm, 1x exhaust top, 1x intake top]

 

Disk drives:

Cache:

1x SSD 128 GB - Intenso 2,5" SSD TOP

Array (no parity):

2x HDD 4 TB - Western Digital Green [Media]

2x HDD 2 TB - Western Digital Green [Media]

1x HDD 1 TB - Western Digital Green [Media]

1x HDD 1 TB - Western Digital Red [VM data and documents]

Unassigned devices:

1x SSD 120 GB - Samsung SSD 840 EVO [Light VM + docker]

1x SSD 250 GB - Samsung SSD 840 EVO [Heavy VM + Games share]

Total Drive Capacity: 14 TB HDD & 498 GB SSD

 

USB stick with unRAID boot media:

Kingston DataTraveler Micro 16 GB

 

Primary Use:

NAS server

VM OpenELEC Kodi (ex XBMC) Media center

VM Windows 10 for myself (gaming, coding, etc.)

VM Ubuntu for myself (fired up when needed as an alternative to Windows 10)

VM Windows 10 for my girlfriend (mostly just for browsing)

 

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Won't you be a GPU short?

 

2x Win10 and 1x OpenELEC?

Won't you be a GPU short?

 

2x Win10 and 1x OpenELEC?

 

Looks that way, also I'd recommend you use LibreELEC instead of OpenELEC (which hasn't seen a commit for a couple of months now)

Won't you be a GPU short?

 

2x Win10 and 1x OpenELEC?

 

You're right about that, forgot to mention - I planned to use the onboard graphics output (as I believe was mentioned in the Linus Tech Tips "Two gamers - one CPU" as a possibility) but found out that's a no-go. Seeing how I'm out of PCIe x16 slots on the motherboard, I will have to make do with two outputs (for now).

 

I've been wanting to look around the forum if a solution exists, but since you mentioned it, I'm guessing there is none and I'll just use the 750TI to to alternate between Media center and the 2nd user.

 

Won't you be a GPU short?

 

2x Win10 and 1x OpenELEC?

 

Looks that way, also I'd recommend you use LibreELEC instead of OpenELEC (which hasn't seen a commit for a couple of months now)

 

Will have a look into that, thanks for the suggestion

 

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EDIT: putting first post images here to keep the updated ones in the topic

 

 

 

 

 

 

The easiest solution to your GPU issue is probably to ditch the girlfriend.  Honestly it'll save you tons of hassle and money in the long run, and don't even get me started on what it's like if you get married.....

The easiest solution to your GPU issue is probably to ditch the girlfriend.  Honestly it'll save you tons of hassle and money in the long run, and don't even get me started on what it's like if you get married.....

Hah, that's one way to do things

You could also look into an x1 GPU for the HTPC. Or if you have a low profile capable HTPC card get an x1 to x16 adapter card and use that.

I've been wanting to look around the forum if a solution exists, but since you mentioned it, I'm guessing there is none and I'll just use the 750TI to to alternate between Media center and the 2nd user.

 

This plan is hit or miss. Sometimes the GPU doesn't soft reset well and will not work when a VM is restarted.

Made some upgrades in the last couple of weeks:

 

Hardware:

- added 16 GB of memory

- added another SSD I had lying around to the cache (128 GB)

- removed the silly CD drive

- rotated the drive cage 90° for better drive placement

- rotated the CPU heatsink and changed the fan configuration a bit for better ventilation

- redid the cable routing in the back of the case

 

Software:

- assigned 250 GB SSD from cache to the array, although it is used solely for games

- been messing around with cache configuration (raid0, raid1 and single-drive)

- been trying out different CPU core assignment configurations between VMs

- tried a couple plugins and docker applications out

 

So far most of the stuff has been running smoothly and I'm very pleased with Unraid. So far two I haven't got around to set a media center/server, but I've been thinking about setting up Plex server in the docker and the SmartTV app instead of OpenELEC Kodi running as the potential third VM.

 

Rotated drive bay:

 

Cabling nice and tidy:

 

 

Quick question:

What would be the best suggested quad-core hyperthreaded CPU core allocation with two VMs (one heavy-user and the other being a lightweight facebook machine)? Been  running: [0,4] - free, [1,5] - light VM, [2,3,6,7] - heavy VM. Does pairing hyperthreaded cores to a VM make sense, or would mixing it up bring better performance?

Mixing up hyperthreaded core does not lead to any improved performance.

 

A couple of things you can do:

You can set the emulator to use core 0,4 to give your VMs a bit more power.

You can even assign core 1,5 to the heavy VM - but set them at the bottom of the order. As long as your light VM doesn't do something crazy, the heavy VM can leverage on a bit more power. This may not even be necessary if you mainly game on the heavy VM. However, if you do CPU-heavy things like video rendering etc., 80% of 1 more core is significant.

 

 

 

Those SATA cables better be fully shielded, (rare, and you'd know if you ordered them or not) or you may run into some weird drive errors as the signals interact from being forced together in bundles like that.

 

It's not supposed to happen, and I'm not convinced it's the actual or sole cause, but there have been multiple issues on this forum that have been solved by unbundling SATA cables and letting them relax naturally instead of being tightly bundled. 

Mixing up hyperthreaded core does not lead to any improved performance.

 

A couple of things you can do:

You can set the emulator to use core 0,4 to give your VMs a bit more power.

You can even assign core 1,5 to the heavy VM - but set them at the bottom of the order. As long as your light VM doesn't do something crazy, the heavy VM can leverage on a bit more power. This may not even be necessary if you mainly game on the heavy VM. However, if you do CPU-heavy things like video rendering etc., 80% of 1 more core is significant.

 

Thanks, will try out the suggestion and play around with it a bit.

 

Those SATA cables better be fully shielded, (rare, and you'd know if you ordered them or not) or you may run into some weird drive errors as the signals interact from being forced together in bundles like that.

 

It's not supposed to happen, and I'm not convinced it's the actual or sole cause, but there have been multiple issues on this forum that have been solved by unbundling SATA cables and letting them relax naturally instead of being tightly bundled.

 

Are you referring to the fact that the multiple cables are zip-tied tightly together, or that the zip-tying might damage the wiring? I didn't pay much attention to the quality of the cables, so all of them are from the low-end of the price range. I'm kinda skeptic about cable interference there, but I'll keep that in mind if I run into some trouble - thanks for mentioning it.

Reading around the forum I stumbled upon multiple threads saying it's not a good idea putting SSD drives in the array. At the moment I have a 250 GB SSD in there, as a dedicated game install location. Is this a bad idea? How would I make the best of three SSD drives (120GB, 128GB and 240GB)? Putting all three in RAID0 cache and games share in cache only? Putting one or two dedicated ones outside the array with unassigned devices plugin?

Keep in mind I am frequently running two VMs and a couple of docker applications (mostly media server oriented ones). Any suggestion is appreciated.

Mount them outside the array using unassigned devices. That or pass through a single SSD to each VM.

Mount them outside the array using unassigned devices. That or pass through a single SSD to each VM.

 

Did that, mounted two SSDs outside the array to be the VM drives, tried to assign the third one (Intenso 128GB) to the cache, but it looks like it's not in a good state, keeps giving me read-only errors. Temporarily I've moved the docker to the light VM's SSD and I'm running the array without the cache. So far so good.

 

Got a question I can't figure out:

If I'm playing a game (let's say Far Cry 3, HW-intense) and the computer starts streaming a 1080p video via Plex server (docker) to the TV, the game becomes unplayable due to stuttering and severe FPS drops. Game is running off the same drive as VM, but it's accessed as an unassigned devices drive share. Where's the bottleneck that's causing this? Is Plex hogging my VM dedicated CPU cores? Is share somehow being accessed via ethernet bridge that's at the same time used for streaming? Is reading from multiple drives at once too hard on my motherboard controller?

Hello.  I'm just making sure you're using isolcpu and not just cpupinning for the dedicated gaming vm cores.  Plex serving often includes transcoding which is usually multithreaded and if you're not using isolcpu it will cause context switching on the pinned vm cores.

 

Also +1 on the x1 video card for LibreElec even though you crossed it out.