Anybody planning a Ryzen build?


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Actually there's a really interesting other way I've found to do it, and should in theory work with any GPU (I have a single 960 myself). Assuming you're booting in UEFI mode, which is only available in the beta right now, if you add "video=efifb:off" this prevents the Linux kernel/unraid from attaching to any graphics adapter at all. When you boot the screen will freeze til you boot up a VM attached to the GPU, but it should work in a more foolproof manner than dealing with the Nvidia bios thing, and in theory should work with and GPUs too.

Nice to hear, but i wonder if anyone with ryzen has tried this?

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I've been running an r7 1700X since April. It works fine and now great with the npt bug fixed.

Woah are you saying that currently you have a ryzen system with only one GPU which is the 960 and yet you're passing through that GPU to the windows VM and unraid isn't giving any issue due to not having a GPU of its own?

this is great!!


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34 minutes ago, ars92 said:


Woah are you saying that currently you have a ryzen system with only one GPU which is the 960 and yet you're passing through that GPU to the windows VM and unraid isn't giving any issue due to not having a GPU of its own?

this is great!!


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That is exactly what I'm saying. No qemu bios shenanigans or anything. The only downside is there's no physical console on the system to go at if something goes wrong networking wise, but that's really rare and only when I'm messing around with stuff.

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2 hours ago, ars92 said:


Woah are you saying that currently you have a ryzen system with only one GPU which is the 960 and yet you're passing through that GPU to the windows VM and unraid isn't giving any issue due to not having a GPU of its own?

this is great!!


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Before I switched to win on bare metal, I was using only one gpu for gaming on unraid. I didn't have to put anything in grub. Just boot up the machine and it displayed the host machine. go to the web interface, launch a vm, and the vm would take over the display. worked like a charm.

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23 hours ago, Tuftuf said:

It will depend on the GPU it self, many Nivida GPU's require you to pass the vbios within the XML although once that is configured it works fine as the only GPU in the system.

 

I'm passing my primary 670 to a windows VM for me and a second GPU firepro to another windows VM.

 

On 11/10/2017 at 10:09 AM, jayseejc said:

That is exactly what I'm saying. No qemu bios shenanigans or anything. The only downside is there's no physical console on the system to go at if something goes wrong networking wise, but that's really rare and only when I'm messing around with stuff.

 

On 11/10/2017 at 12:17 PM, puddleglum said:

Before I switched to win on bare metal, I was using only one gpu for gaming on unraid. I didn't have to put anything in grub. Just boot up the machine and it displayed the host machine. go to the web interface, launch a vm, and the vm would take over the display. worked like a charm.

 

23 hours ago, Tuftuf said:

It will depend on the GPU it self, many Nivida GPU's require you to pass the vbios within the XML although once that is configured it works fine as the only GPU in the system.

 

I'm passing my primary 670 to a windows VM for me and a second GPU firepro to another windows VM.

 

Awesome stuff guys!! Looking forward to refresh my unraid system once Ryzen refresh plus volta comes out!

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Hey folks, I am trying to figure out what motherboard to buy for a Ryzen build for NAS and a Windows gaming VM. 

 

I would like to buy a Asus B350 micro atx board but they (and all AM4 Matx boards) only have one PCIE 3 16x slot, the other one is slow and not ideal for the gpu for gaming. So I am wondering,

 

Is it possible to pass through the primary slot to the VM and use the slow secondary slot for unRaid with a cheap graphics card or is this not possible? 

 

If it is not possible is it likely to be a problem not having a screen for unRaid if its giving problems or is accessing it through a laptop as good? 

 

Finally it sounds like the Ryzen problems are generally sorted, I am just wondering as a complete newbie to unRaid/linux/system building what are the odds that this will be easy to get working. 

 

 

 

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I use the ASRock Taichi x370 and love it.   Look into a X370 chipset board.

 

Yes,  but I have limited pass-through expierence other than clicking the checkbox next to the one I want passed through.

 

Getting unraid up and going is very easy,  I had no issues with my Ryzen build aside from a glitch with display resolution in Unraid,  Everything else just works and my VMs (Win7, Win2k12 Server Datacentre) all work flawlessly.

Edited by fmp4m
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On 11/7/2017 at 9:55 PM, phbigred said:

If you run the most recent 6.4rc10b you shouldnt have to have C-states off. I haven’t run them turned off since rc7. I don’t know what the I’ll effect of having them off since RC8, that’s when I flipped the option in bios. 

 

Asus posted an updated BIOS, so I just updated it and left C-State enabled.   I'll report back if my system locks up again.

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14 hours ago, luisv said:

Since you're looking at mATX, are you trying to stay within a specific footprint or case?   

 

Yes, I am thinking the  Fractal design arc 2 mini case, its nice and small with lots of space for drives and it will take a fairly large gfx card. Also the B350 Matx boards are a good bit cheaper than the X370 Atx boards. I had come to the conclusion that an X370 Atx case was necessary but now I am not really sure, it seems like I can pass the card through in the primary slot, I am just not sure if this is the way to go. 

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How are people passing through Audio to their windows VM for gaming?

 

Just doing USB pass through of a usb soundcard causes drop outs during load screens and a few other times. I've read the better way is to pass through another usb controller such as a PCIe card. That might be a reason to take x370 over something else.

 

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1 hour ago, Rowanh said:

 

Yes, I am thinking the  Fractal design arc 2 mini case, its nice and small with lots of space for drives and it will take a fairly large gfx card. Also the B350 Matx boards are a good bit cheaper than the X370 Atx boards. I had come to the conclusion that an X370 Atx case was necessary but now I am not really sure, it seems like I can pass the card through in the primary slot, I am just not sure if this is the way to go. 

 

I was originally looking at the Arc 2 Midi, but then decided on the R5 as I felt that over time, dust would make it's way into the case due to the design of the mesh top.  mATX vs ATX decision... I felt the extra slots, ports, etc usually included with ATX boards was worth the slight cost difference for future growth and or repurposing reasons, but neither decision is wrong.  I have a mITX in my Win10 workstation and love the small form factor.  If you're in the US, holiday sales are around the corner and or local stores might provide combo discounts.   

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On 10/28/2017 at 3:21 AM, Tuftuf said:

The 43 error I had, disappeared after a reboot of the server.

 

Updated to the official release and now testing further!

 

Since fixing a few other things, rebuilding the vm and upgrading I'm seeing 110fps. For the GPU I have and settings it's on i'm happy with that. Now I just need to solve the audio dropout issue I have with usb passthrough.

 

On 11/10/2017 at 5:29 AM, Tuftuf said:

It will depend on the GPU it self, many Nivida GPU's require you to pass the vbios within the XML although once that is configured it works fine as the only GPU in the system.

 

I'm passing my primary 670 to a windows VM for me and a second GPU firepro to another windows VM.

 

 

In the end what was your process for passing through the GPU? I'm trying to pass through a lone 670 but I keep running into code 43.

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I figured I'd weigh in with my info here since there's been a few passthrough questions now that the NPT bug is resolved. 

 

My system is a Gigabyte X370 Gaming K7 with an R7 1700, 32 GB 3200 Mhz, and a GTX 1080. I am running the latest BIOS for my board at this time (F7a).

 

I am doing one Windows 10 VM for gaming, and passing my GTX 1080 through to it. Prior to the NPT bug fix, I was evaluating unRAID on a trial, and aside from the performance issues, it worked great and the 1080 was the only GPU in my system, and I got it passed through just fine to the VM by dumping the BIOS and putting it in the XML manually. When I came back a couple months later now that the fix is in, I haven't been able to do that without a code 43, and I eventually relented and put a small graphics accelerator (Radeon 8490) in the bottom slot of the board to let unRAID hold onto and I have had no trouble passing the 1080 through since. Plus, now I can have a smaller monitor plugged into the accelerator to keep an eye on the console.  There may be ways around this, but I got tired of fiddling with it and that's the solution I came to. Cheap graphics accelerators can be found online for very cheap if you choose to go this route.

 

As for USB passthrough and audio, here's my setup there. From my tinkering, with the latest BIOS, I found that devices plugged into the top two full-size PCI slots get put in their own IOMMU groups. The third slot does not, and the x1 slots also do not. So I put my GTX 1080 in the top slot (the only one with full x16 speed), and put my USB 3.0 card (Renesas uPD720201) in the second one, even though it is only an x1 card, because this puts it in its own group making it easy to pass through. I then stubbed it in the boot line, and it works beautifully. I've had issues with audio lag when using the audio out on my monitor (AKA graphics audio), and so I'm using a USB sound card plugged into the passed through USB card and it works beautifully. Plugging it into a non-passed through port works horribly.

 

There may be better solutions to all this, but this is my current configuration, so I thought I'd weigh in with it to give a bit more information to those wondering what kind of results they can expect.

Edited by ms4sman
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51 minutes ago, Clay Smith said:

 

 

In the end what was your process for passing through the GPU? I'm trying to pass through a lone 670 but I keep running into code 43.

 

I followed the Nivida GPU passthrough guide that showed you how to dump your vbios and then provide the path to it within the XML. 

 

 

 

 

Edited by Tuftuf
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27 minutes ago, ms4sman said:

I figured I'd weigh in with my info here since there's been a few passthrough questions now that the NPT bug is resolved. 

 

My system is a Gigabyte X370 Gaming K7 with an R7 1700, 32 GB 3200 Mhz, and a GTX 1080. I am running the latest BIOS for my board at this time (F7a).

 

I am doing one Windows 10 VM for gaming, and passing my GTX 1080 through to it. Prior to the NPT bug fix, I was evaluating unRAID on a trial, and aside from the performance issues, it worked great and the 1080 was the only GPU in my system, and I got it passed through just fine to the VM by dumping the BIOS and putting it in the XML manually. When I came back a couple months later now that the fix is in, I haven't been able to do that without a code 43, and I eventually relented and put a small graphics accelerator (Radeon 8490) in the bottom slot of the board to let unRAID hold onto and I have had no trouble passing the 1080 through since. Plus, now I can have a smaller monitor plugged into the accelerator to keep an eye on the console.  There may be ways around this, but I got tired of fiddling with it and that's the solution I came to. Cheap graphics accelerators can be found online for very cheap if you choose to go this route.

 

As for USB passthrough and audio, here's my setup there. From my tinkering, with the latest BIOS, I found that devices plugged into the top two full-size PCI slots get put in their own IOMMU groups. The third slot does not, and the x1 slots also do not. So I put my GTX 1080 in the top slot (the only one with full x16 speed), and put my USB 3.0 card (Renesas uPD720201) in the second one, even though it is only an x1 card, because this puts it in its own group making it easy to pass through. I then stubbed it in the boot line, and it works beautifully. I've had issues with audio lag when using the audio out on my monitor (AKA graphics audio), and so I'm using a USB sound card plugged into the passed through USB card and it works beautifully. Plugging it into a non-passed through port works horribly.

 

There may be better solutions to all this, but this is my current configuration, so I thought I'd weigh in with it to give a bit more information to those wondering what kind of results they can expect.

 

Thanks for your post! What you have explained is very similar to myself apart from I've not given up on the passthrough in the top port and I've not purchased a usb pcie card yet.

 

I started off passing through just the 670, then I added a 6950 but replaced that with a Firepro I had spare. I'm running two GPU's in my system which is the main reason ive not tried the PCIe usb card yet. Passing through the Keyboard and Mouse has always worked great. USB audio has drop outs, but I can play most games with only a few audio hickups.. some are much worse than others.

 

After the NPT fix I also had the 43 error, made a couple of posts about it in the pre release thread. I don't really have any proof but I felt that I had more issues after my VM was shutdown after the NPT fix than before. To be clear I mean shutting down the VM and starting it up again.

 

I installed the NPT fix (before Limetech added it to rc10) using a dvb plugin build scripts and supplying the patch before it actually built the thing. Then the fun started.

I rebooted and tested my Windows VM.. It worked.. GREAT.

I rebooted and my GPU would not start up with error 43. NOT SO GREAT!

I created a new VM and my GPU would not start up Error 43. NOT SO GREAT! (Note this error 43 is presented to me within Device Manager, not at boot like I've seen others post)

I repeated this many times... nothing seemed to fix it. New VM, New Drivers, Old drivers. 

 

Then I rebooted my whole server... and Error 43 disappeared.

 

This led me to think that there are some issues after a VM is shutdown with the hand off with the GPU. I have no fact or really any proof to back this up. But I've not had another error code 43 since then first few days of testing.

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1 minute ago, Tuftuf said:

 

Thanks for your post! What you have explained is very similar to myself apart from I've not given up on the passthrough in the top port and I've not purchased a usb pcie card yet.

 

I started off passing through just the 670, then I added a 6950 but replaced that with a Firepro I had spare. I'm running two GPU's in my system which is the main reason ive not tried the PCIe usb card yet. Passing through the Keyboard and Mouse has always worked great. USB audio has drop outs, but I can play most games with only a few audio hickups.. some are much worse than others.

 

After the NPT fix I also had the 43 error, made a couple of posts about it in the pre release thread. I don't really have any proof but I felt that I had more issues after my VM was shutdown after the NPT fix than before. To be clear I mean shutting down the VM and starting it up again.

 

I installed the NPT fix (before Limetech added it to rc10) using a dvb plugin build scripts and supplying the patch before it actually built the thing. Then the fun started.

I rebooted and tested my Windows VM.. It worked.. GREAT.

I rebooted and my GPU would not start up with error 43. NOT SO GREAT!

I created a new VM and my GPU would not start up Error 43. NOT SO GREAT! (Note this error 43 is presented to me within Device Manager, not at boot like I've seen others post)

I repeated this many times... nothing seemed to fix it. New VM, New Drivers, Old drivers. 

 

Then I rebooted my whole server... and Error 43 disappeared.

 

This led me to think that there are some issues after a VM is shutdown with the hand off with the GPU. I have no fact or really any proof to back this up. But I've not had another error code 43 since then first few days of testing.

 

 

From experience, the hand-off/ device reset issues have only ever plagued me with Gigabyte boards since they are the very few that allow you to choose a PCI-e slot as Primary display.

Having said that, the reset issues affected my Samsung nvme when passed through to a VM and not the gfx card.

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4 minutes ago, Tuftuf said:

I installed the NPT fix (before Limetech added it to rc10) using a dvb plugin build scripts and supplying the patch before it actually built the thing. Then the fun started.

I rebooted and tested my Windows VM.. It worked.. GREAT.

I rebooted and my GPU would not start up with error 43. NOT SO GREAT!

I created a new VM and my GPU would not start up Error 43. NOT SO GREAT! (Note this error 43 is presented to me within Device Manager, not at boot like I've seen others post)

I repeated this many times... nothing seemed to fix it. New VM, New Drivers, Old drivers. 

 

Then I rebooted my whole server... and Error 43 disappeared.

This is very interesting information. My error 43 was also in the Device Manager, but it did not go away with rebooting the server as I did that quite a few times while trying to fix it, changing settings and such. I wonder what is different there. That said, I'm not overly concerned about it because like I said, I kinda like having a small monitor plugged in as a console monitor anyway. That said, I plan to get a different accelerator that fits in a x1 slot to free up my other full length slot, even if its not in its own IOMMU group. 

 

I didn't try the fix before unRAID released it, I just waited for rc10. I'll keep an eye out and maybe try it again once the full release arrives, although like I said I kinda like having the extra GPU for now. I just with the third full length slot worked for passthrough.

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Can someone running UNRAID 6.4 RC10 and Threadripper please try disabling ASPM in their BIOS (ASROCK boards have this, not sure about others) and also adding pcie_aspm=off  to the flash/boot section in the UNRAID GUI and test GPU passthrough again? I have read reports that this may resolve the D3/sleep issue and allow us to reboot VMs without having to reboot the host. If it works, could be an acceptable workaround until the wider problem is resolved.

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