build upgrade

[tabac1987]

hey all im currently running unraid with a pentium g4400 with 40gb of ram, z270 motherboard unraid runs plex, transmission and unifi controller, im looking to run a windows 10 vm, ive tried it with the current config and it works with a rx 580 gpu but its slow im assuming the cpu is the bottleneck i do light gaming and general computing could someone recommed a good cpu that would suit my needs? i was thinking a i7 7700k

[tdallen]

Yes, your CPU is almost definitely a bottleneck.  It should be fairly effective at doing one or two things at a time but isn't ideal for that kind of load.  You don't mention the motherboard model but assuming it has a BIOS update for Kaby Lake processors (I don't know of any that don't) then the 7700k is the current king of the hill in 4 core, 8 thread processors.  Given what you want to do I think a Core i7 is appropriate - I wouldn't bother with a Core i3 or i5 to run both Plex and a gaming Windows VM on top of unRAID.

[tabac1987]

Yeah I though the i7 would be a good bet, so would I beable to use the 4 physical cores plus the 8 hyper threaded one in the vm? And would it be better to use a ssd for the storage?


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[tdallen]

You are definitely going to want to have at least one SSD, either cache or unassigned, for your VM image.  For that matter you want Plex running from an SSD too, not the array.

 

You'll have to experiment with core assignments to see what works for you.  You can leave all 8 cores (four real, four hyperthreaded) unassigned and let usage be a free for all, but many folks have found that they like to pin dedicated cores to performance sensitive VMs under unRAID.  Since you're running Plex, a starting point might be two real cores for unRAID and Dockers (along with their HT cores), and two for the VM (along with their HT cores).

[tabac1987]

You are definitely going to want to have at least one SSD, either cache or unassigned, for your VM image.  For that matter you want Plex running from an SSD too, not the array.
 
You'll have to experiment with core assignments to see what works for you.  You can leave all 8 cores (four real, four hyperthreaded) unassigned and let usage be a free for all, but many folks have found that they like to pin dedicated cores to performance sensitive VMs under unRAID.  Since you're running Plex, a starting point might be two real cores for unRAID and Dockers (along with their HT cores), and two for the VM (along with their HT cores).

I have a sad I can throw in so that’s all good, but only 120gb not sure if that’s enough for plex and a vm, so I should load the docker for plex on the ssd?


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[tdallen]

The "cache" drive in unRAID has really become the "application" drive, and it's where most folks install their Dockers and Docker data.  An SSD works very well as the "application" drive - 120GB is probably fine but if you are buying something I'd probably start with 250GB.

 

Plex does a lot of I/O and will keep your array drives constantly spinning if you have Plex on the array.  It's a great idea to relocate it to an SSD based cache drive.

 

People have typically either put their VM images on the cache drive, or mounted a dedicated SSD for the VM via Unassigned Devices.

 

FWIW, my cache drive currently has about 80GB of stuff on it - Dockers only, no VMs currently.  Dockers, Docker data, downloads, etc.  I need to clean it off, but it paints a picture - stuff does accumulate on it.