After much investigation, I settled on the Ryzen 7 2600 CPU, with Asrock B450 Pro4 and 32Gb Ram fopr my new server build to replace some old 2014 hardware.

Now my first hurdle - This is my first non intel CPU and I have had loads of Intel builds over the years and they all have onboard graphics. 

I am not a gamer and have never ever bought a graphics card in my life so the build hit its first hurdle of 5 beeps - no graphics card (even through the mobo has all the connections for such.  So - I learnt something new about most Ryzen CPU's and these mobo's - no GPU.  That really needs to be advertised better.

 

I went out and bought the cheapest video card I can find to complete the build and test it. 

As I use a load of VM's, I read with worry about all these graphics card passthrough issues people were having - even having to buy two graphics cards! 

I settled on an AMD R5 230 for $30.  Added it in and server up and running, build all fine, unraid installed, added a few old test drives.

I even had a VM ported over with no issues once it updated its drivers.  And I could RDP to it fine and no issues with graphics cards - I don't think I even passed it through..... Not sure what all the fuss was about that I read in the forums.

 

So - My issue.

I cant remove this graphics card - or I get the 5 beeps.

My unraid servers run headless in the garage - but will not boot without a graphics card.

This mobo has 1 x pcie-16x (where the graphics card is), Then an extra pcie-4x (where my disk controller is connected now).  But I have a 4 port NIC for PFSENSE that now cant fit anywhere.......

 

In summary - am I stuffed ?

Option 1 - buy 2 x 2 port nics on pcie x1 (there are 4 of these slots and I need one for the additional 2 drives). and hope they are supported, sell my 4 port server nic

Option 2 - buy a more expensive mobo that has 3 PCIE x4 or better slots (cost about AUD$250, plus loss of AUD$150 for the other)

Option 3 - are there any other options ?

 

Thanks in advance.

V

3 hours ago, vw-kombi said:

I cant remove this graphics card - or I get the 5 beeps. 

My Asus prime x370 pro, could no GPU install（also 5 beeps）, bootup normal and access Windows thr RDP. If your MB won't boot without GPU, MB change should be the good option.

 

Or you may buy some 1x GPU card.

Edited May 22, 20197 yr by Benson

What Benson said. See if there is a BIOS option to continue on error, instead of halting on error. The beeps may be informational only, not a show stopper.

Cheers for the info - Done so much googling.

Sort of resigned to the cheapest option of buying a couple of cheap dual port NIC's for pfsense. 

But I also figured I may just buy one (WAN/OPT1) and then get a smart switch for OPT1 trunk so it can have a VLAN for LAN/IOT/GUEST with an ubiquety LR AP on there.  Been wanting that setup and needed a push I guess. 

Edited May 22, 20197 yr by vw-kombi

Just an update on this in case others in the same boat.  

 

I just got a 4 port PCIE x1 NIC and got around the issue (still have the server nic on the shelf).

I have since found there is a 'rare' new PCIe X1 Graphics card that others got - which I am also buying to free up that 16x slot.

 

I plan on eventually moving my array controller to the 16x 'graphics' slot, then I can add a fast 2TB nvme drive (which means the other PCIx8 slot stops working).