Unraid setup help & advice needed

[Timothyy]

Dear Readers,

 

First of all sorry for the long text but I would like to explain the situation.

 

Where I was out for years of building computers and playing with hardware configurations I recently decided to start with it again. I left around core2duo, release of SLI configurations and ....

 

Partly inspired by Linus Tech Tips and their 7 gamers 1 CPU (build) video(s) and some other unraid setups I searched for some similar parts from the first video mentioned and surprisingly I was able to find some at second hand. I also have the wish already for years to set up the play room with lots of flexibility and I am using VMWare Workstation for small things.

 

I know that for my purpose which I will explain later on I could have gone for a lot of whole different setups and even better ones but I currently am in possession of the following parts (bought second handed):

 

Motherboard: ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS (7 x PCIe x 16 slot(s), 8 SATA 6gb/s ports, 1 M.2 socket 3, so enough possibilities)

CPU: 2x Intel XEON E5-2697 v3 (14 cores, 28 threads each)

CPU Cooler: 2x Noctua U12DX i4

Memory: 4x Samsung 16gb DDR4 2133mhz

Case: be quiet! Dark Base Pro 900 rev.2

 

The purpose is to build a setup with 2 or 3 VMs for gaming which will be used simultaneously where one of them is probably also a power workstation, room to play with Docker, different Linux instances, ad hoc VMs for testing and maybe even NAS in future. I will also not use water cooling in my setup. I do not have very strict requirements for the gaming VMs except that it should stay affordable. So I do not need 4K, the highest FPS, if it runs acceptable smoothly and at 1920*1080 around medium settings I am satisfied. Still have some monitors around with that resolution, so will also not buy new screens.

I will if needed upgrade in future when I am running into limits. 

 

Last but not least, I have to find some answers on the next questions and I am hoping some of you can help me out:

 

Q1. I already saw a couple of posts on the forum of people having the same motherboard. Still anyone using it? Anyone willing to share a link or configuration.

Q2. for what video card should I go, I will narrow the search to NIVIDIA cards only due to, I was told, problems with AMD which still exist in combination with unraid.

I was thinking of the GTX 1050/1060 or maybe even around the 1660 range.

Q2.1 If I am not mistaken I should equip PCI slot 1 with the first GPU, when a GPU is taking 2 'heights' -is it 2U? - , can I equip PCI slot 3 with the second card and 5 with the eventual third? Or should they be plugged in to slot 1, 2 and 3?

Q3. what is the amount of memory that is covering my needs? I am thinking at upgrading to 128 GB.

Q4. Things that pop up definitely to check before buying, assembling, configuring, to read other then the manual, to consider e.g. or do's and don'ts.

Q5. What would be my best option to go for the PSU? I already know that my CPUs have a TDP of 145Watt each and that I have to feed 2 or 3 GPUs.

Q6. What would be advisable for caching drives and size and what for storage, SSD/HDD/M.2?

 

Many thanks in advance and I am looking forward to your reply soon.

 

Edited September 27, 2019 by Timothyy