Hi all,

 

I'm contemplating a new build with a 3900x cpu. I'd use it for a Gaming VM with maybe 6 isolated cores, and also a Plex server, with dockers for Sonarr, Radarr, Nzbget, etc. Storage will be 3x 8TB WD Reds (with 1 as parity), and 2x 4TB WD Reds.

 

I may also throw in dockers for the Unifi controller, PiHole, or a few other fun projects. I figure 12 cores/24 threads is enough to handle my needs so I settled on the 3900x for the CPU. I also have a GTX 1080 for the GPU from my current gaming rig. Not sure about the rest of the hardware though.

 

That's where I need some help. I'm new to unRAID , and really don't want to buy hardware that's going to give me grief with virtualization or IOMMU groups or causes me to have to figure out workarounds. It's kind of hard to look up what mobo works best with unRAID and the 3900x when poking around online, and I don't really know what to look for to ensure compatibility. Can anyone recommend what the best and easiest motherboard (and maybe RAM?) would be to accomplish the above? Budget is flexible but I don't need to spend more than necessary to achieve the goals.

 

Thanks!

Edited September 27, 20196 yr by GameKing505

I'm brand new to this, so take everything with a grain of salt. I'm in the midst of setting up my *first* Unraid server using the same hardware as you.

 

I have the 3900x, but have a X470 Gaming Pro. One thing to be aware of is you are buying bleeding edge hardware and things may not all work out of the box and may require tinkering. Temperature sensing may not work. Recent BIOS upgrades on x470/x570 to support ryzen 3000 have broken GPU passthrough on *some* boards, and some manufactureres have released bios updates to address this. You're looking for a bios update for the board released in the past 2 months that references an ABBA fix.

 

If you are not keen on this tinkering and reading, aka 2920x/2950x threadripper may be a better bet, that is a well established platform with many other people you can learnh from.

 

In order to get passthrough working on my board I had to use this custom kernel

 

Now to answer your question, the rest of the hardware is entirely dependent on you. RAM I would go for 32 GB of whatever is on the QVL of your motherboard.

Will the motherboard your purchasing have enough SATA slots? M.2 slots? PCIE Lanes? Based on your requirements above the answer is probably yes.

Before purchasing the motherboard, head over to the vendor site, and download the user manual for it, and try and find BIOS settings that unraid would require. Booting Legacy/UEFI mode, IOMMU support, etc.

Chances are most boards will work for you, and no way of knowing that they don't, until you have it in hand. Best you can do is read the user manual before hand and see what other people have done here.

 

To be honest, I thought I was going to have a headache passing through a Rx480GPU on an x470 board with ryzen 3000, but had it working in an evening of intense googling. If you go bleeding edge you will be doing some tinkering.

 

 

Edited October 1, 20196 yr by bobo89

Thanks for the reply!

 

I think I'm pretty set on the 3900x. If this whole experiment doesn't work then I'll just rock windows and their semi-shitty implementation of Raid, with plex and all the relevant dockers, etc. I don't want to do that but it's a decent fallback if I surrender. I'm a decent tinkerer, and do derive some joy out of it, so I think I'm OK to run with trickier hardware.

 

Any reason you went with x470 instead of x570? I hadn't considered that as an option but I do like the idea of a motherboard without a fan, which all the x570 boards seem to have. Not sure if PCIe4 is really worth it either.

 

Edited October 1, 20196 yr by GameKing505

1 hour ago, GameKing505 said:

If this whole experiment doesn't work

Keep in mind the linux and open source community is playing catch up with the new hardware, so if it doesn't work right now, there is a good chance it will work in a few months. This is an ongoing thing, as hardware manufacturers really don't care if their hardware isn't compatible with linux, the only thing they bother with is windows for their consumer grade stuff.

That's a great point. I'm sure support /will/ come, if a little late.

 

FYI- I ended up ordering the Asus X570 TUF Gaming plus and 32GB of G.SKILL Trident Z Neo, just based off the QVL list for the board.

 

I'm hugely excited for the new build, as my last CPU was an i5 4670k. It served me well but this new beast is 4x the compute. Can't wait to get to my build and dive into the world of unRAID.

I am also planning a new build and am thinking about going AMD Ryzen 7 2700X 3.2GHz 8 Core wtih ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming 4 for Plex + few dockers and 1 maybe 2 VMs. Would love any feed back from anyone who also is running this set up or suggestions to something similar that would work better

I went down the path of the 3900x and everything seems to be working for me right now on the CPU and performance wise, i have some docker issues, but not related to the CPU and Mobo

 

:: Build ::

AMD Ryzen 3900x (12c/24t) 

MSI MPG X570 Gaming Plus

H100i Pro Liquid AM4 Cooler

16gb DDR-4

GTX 1050Ti

On 10/1/2019 at 3:25 PM, GameKing505 said:

Thanks for the reply!

 

I think I'm pretty set on the 3900x. If this whole experiment doesn't work then I'll just rock windows and their semi-shitty implementation of Raid, with plex and all the relevant dockers, etc. I don't want to do that but it's a decent fallback if I surrender. I'm a decent tinkerer, and do derive some joy out of it, so I think I'm OK to run with trickier hardware.

 

Any reason you went with x470 instead of x570? I hadn't considered that as an option but I do like the idea of a motherboard without a fan, which all the x570 boards seem to have. Not sure if PCIe4 is really worth it either.

 

The rational was lower cost, don't need PCIe4, and received the board part of a package deal with the 3900x, and it all works with unraid as I need it to.

just built a ryzen build, love it..

 

:: Build ::

AMD Ryzen 3700x (8c/16t) 

Asus Tuf Gaming X570 Plus

32gb DDR-4

GTX 1050Ti

 

after realizing it didn't have a GPU built in (took me a few hours of frustration), finally got it up and running.  Suprised i just rebooted with the flash drive and everything works as is. Nice to have so much headroom for blue iris.  Running great, haven't used AMD for about 10 years, they knocked it out of the park with the Ryzen 3rd gen.

Edited October 21, 20196 yr by xman111

On 10/21/2019 at 2:50 AM, xman111 said:

just built a ryzen build, love it..

 

:: Build ::

AMD Ryzen 3700x (8c/16t) 

Asus Tuf Gaming X570 Plus

32gb DDR-4

GTX 1050Ti

 

after realizing it didn't have a GPU built in (took me a few hours of frustration), finally got it up and running.  Suprised i just rebooted with the flash drive and everything works as is. Nice to have so much headroom for blue iris.  Running great, haven't used AMD for about 10 years, they knocked it out of the park with the Ryzen 3rd gen.

Hello, can you post your iommu group?

Thank you very much

Edited November 11, 20196 yr by rachid596

Yah, I also have been looking into going this direction, was looking at a Crosshair VIII board, just need to know the IOMMU groups...

I made a thread on the X570 AORUS here. Single GPU passthrough, two usb controllers passthrough, cpu temps, fan speed/controller, etc. All without ACS overrides. Only thing I haven't gotten to work is onboard audio passthrough.

On 11/13/2019 at 8:21 AM, Warrentheo said:

Yah, I also have been looking into going this direction, was looking at a Crosshair VIII board, just need to know the IOMMU groups...

Hey, I've got that board (no wifi version) with a placeholder (3200G) CPU until I can track down a 3950x - only have Windows on it right now, but if you can tell me how to list the groups from Windows - happy to post em later!

On 11/26/2019 at 11:59 AM, mbezzo said:

Hey, I've got that board (no wifi version) with a placeholder (3200G) CPU until I can track down a 3950x - only have Windows on it right now, but if you can tell me how to list the groups from Windows - happy to post em later!

I don't think Windows even thinks in the terms of IOMMU groups, most likely you will need to temp boot off of a Linux Live USB/DVD image...  The commands are:

for d in /sys/kernel/iommu_groups/*/devices/*;
do
n=${d#*/iommu_groups/*}; n=${n%%/*}
printf '    IOMMU Group %s ' "$n"
lspci -nns "${d##*/}"
done

You have the setup I am looking into getting as well, so that info would be useful 😄

So, turns out that 3950 is damn near impossible to acquire, so I’ve “settled” on a 3900x which should arrive today. I’ll see if I can get the IOMMU groups here soon!

On 10/21/2019 at 2:50 AM, xman111 said:

just built a ryzen build, love it..

 

:: Build ::

AMD Ryzen 3700x (8c/16t) 

Asus Tuf Gaming X570 Plus

32gb DDR-4

GTX 1050Ti

 

after realizing it didn't have a GPU built in (took me a few hours of frustration), finally got it up and running.  Suprised i just rebooted with the flash drive and everything works as is. Nice to have so much headroom for blue iris.  Running great, haven't used AMD for about 10 years, they knocked it out of the park with the Ryzen 3rd gen.

Hey!

 

Going to try ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus   It work grait? And bios settings is ok?

On 12/3/2019 at 3:20 PM, mbezzo said:

So, turns out that 3950 is damn near impossible to acquire, so I’ve “settled” on a 3900x which should arrive today. I’ll see if I can get the IOMMU groups here soon!

Hey, I am looking to buy the same board...wondering if you could share the IOMMU groups. Thanks!

On 12/3/2019 at 6:20 PM, mbezzo said:

So, turns out that 3950 is damn near impossible to acquire, so I’ve “settled” on a 3900x which should arrive today. I’ll see if I can get the IOMMU groups here soon!

I went with the 3900x as well.  It turns out we get all the cache of the 3950X, so more cache per core, plus we get higher clocks than the 3950X.  I just got it running today.

Just purchased the ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus (No-Wifi version).

Curious what people's Virtualization experiences are.
Does it suck up a GPU to boot unraid (even if unraid in server mode)?

If it DOES require a GPU to boot unraid....does the BIOs allow you to choose which PICe slot to Boot from...cuz it would suck if it forcefully grabs the primary x16 slot from you everytime.

 

IOMMU Groups, Passthrough Experiences, Audio, Bios Config, etc. Wonder about it.

This reddit post has comments which seem to show a BIOS update gives decent IOMMU groupings.....but someone also states there are some vfio issues....such as problems booting from 2nd GPU.

 

Edited July 1, 20206 yr by Stupifier