It  won't be anytime soon but I've been thinking about my next upgrade. Right now I have an ASRock z87 extreme11/ac (Socket LGA1150) with 32gb RAM and an 3.5ghz i7 with 4 cores/8 threads. I got this before I delved into UnRAID 6 with all of it's docker and VM capabilities so when I upgraded to 6 I just virtualized my old desktop and added it in there. For mt next build I'm looking to be able to have a gaming machine but also want some more traditional server aspects. I'd like to be able to have more RAM and cores to have more virtual machines, like a Linux box and maybe another gaming machine but I don't know if a gaming motherboard would reality suit that kind of setup. I know there are plenty of users that have done this so maybe I'm overthinking it but I don't think I'd get the performance I'd like by allocating the allotted resources available on a gaming motherboard. I think most of those have 64gb RAM at most and I'd want 32 for the main gaming machine and I'd have only another 32 for a linux box, UnRAID and all of it's docker stuff. It just doesn't give me a lot of wiggle room but I probably won't have all those machines running at once. If I get a server motherboard, I'm not sure how well it would perform for gaming. I don't know much about the Xeon line of processors or if the board chipsets would be ideal. Also, maybe I'm looking in the wrong places but most of the ones I've seen have DD3 instead of DDR4. I think a dual socket with at least 128GB would be good. That would be great if they made a gaming board like this.

Anyway, I'm probably overthinking this but I'd like to hear some thoughts and opinions. I don't have any immediate plans to upgrade, maybe in a year or so.

EDIT: Also, what's with the covering behind the I/O plate all these motherboards seem to have nowadays? When did that become a thing and why?

Edited February 8, 20188 yr by bobbintb

33 minutes ago, bobbintb said:

Also, what's with the covering behind the I/O plate all these motherboards seem to have nowadays? When did that become a thing and why?

 

For my personal use at home I use consumer rather than server motherboards.

 

Like the RGB LED lighting, I believe it's meant to look, er... sexy! Not being a gamer it's rather wasted on me, though I do appreciate the use of quality capacitors and VRMs that can provide enough power to allow overclocking. I don't overclock but I feel reassured by the extra headroom.

Yeah, that's what I've been doing. There really isn't anything that fits what I am looking for. I'm probably being too picky but I'm looking for something in between, a gaming motherboard with enough resources to allocate many gaming VMs. But I don't even think they make a dual socket gaming mobo. Maybe an i9 system with a lot of RAM would be my best bet.

"Something in between" would be something like a workstation motherboard or a high end PC. I'm afraid I couldn't face buying an i9 system but now the remaining issue with passing through graphics cards to VMs has been resolved I could imagine splashing out on a Threadripper. All those PCIe lanes are very tempting.

Hmmm. I'll take a look at that too. I'm not up to speed on this stuff like I used to be and I haven't bought an AMD since before they bought ATI. Of course by the time I am actually in the market to buy something I'm sure they will have something else anyway.

Generally, if I don't need need dual CPUs, over 64GB of memory or IPMI, I'll go with a gaming board. Otherwise, I'll go with a previous generation xeon platform (saves $).

 

As for gaming and server motherboards, it's not the motherboards that you have to watch out for. It's the fact that xeons tend to have more cores/threads at slower clock speeds. Some games will be fine with a ton of slower cores and others will run better with fewer but faster cores.

 

For what you're after, I'd take a close look at AMD Threadripper. Basically it provides a large number of cores/threads at higher clock speeds and 128GB of ram is doable. Well, that and a ton of PCIe lanes.

13 hours ago, doubleohwhatever said:

Generally, if I don't need need dual CPUs, over 64GB of memory or IPMI, I'll go with a gaming board. Otherwise, I'll go with a previous generation xeon platform (saves $).

 

As for gaming and server motherboards, it's not the motherboards that you have to watch out for. It's the fact that xeons tend to have more cores/threads at slower clock speeds. Some games will be fine with a ton of slower cores and others will run better with fewer but faster cores.

 

For what you're after, I'd take a close look at AMD Threadripper. Basically it provides a large number of cores/threads at higher clock speeds and 128GB of ram is doable. Well, that and a ton of PCIe lanes.

 

After considering what OP is doing and taking a hard look at Threadripper, it's just not worth the cost.  You can get a Dual E5 2680v2 system (way overkill) for less than the cost of a Threadripper chip.  And it's similar performance gaming wise.

 

Even Sandybridge is keeping up with the 7900x.  Threadripper is a good choice if you factor in power/other constraints though I imagine.

If you're going to try and run a lot of ram 128 or higher I would use a supermicro server board with ECC memory, preferably registered. It will be more stable.

For me being able to manage remotely is a must so the choice is easy i've got to have a server board with ecc.

It doesn't need to to be a dual e5 xeon either. Just a normal single socket e3 is plenty for most of what I do in unraid.