Hello all,

I have an "old" desktop (Phenom X6 1050T + 8gb ram + Geforce GTX950)

My daughter uses it to play Sims, that's pretty much it

I also have my Unraid Server that I use as a Vanilla server (don't have much choice anyway since it's a very old AMD Athlon X2 250 with 4gb ram)

 

I was considering upgrading my desktop with a used Ryzen 5 1600 I may be able to get for $40 to be able to rip my bluray collection (way too slow with the current X6 1050T). And my daughter would also use that new build to keep playing Sims

 

Then I thought why not combine everything: upgrade my server with that Ryzen 5 1600, and use it as well for a virtual Windows 10 machine that my daughter can use for Sims, and me to rip blurays with MakeMKV and Handbrake

 

Is this feasible? Is the Ryzen 5 1600 powerful enough?

I know i will need a new motherboard.....is there any specific chipset i need to consider, or at least to avoid? How much ram would I need at least?

And finally, where can I find some tutorials?

 

Thanks

33 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

I have an "old" desktop (Phenom X6 1050T + 8gb ram + Geforce GTX950)

 

Is this feasible? Is the Ryzen 5 1600 powerful enough?

I know i will need a new motherboard.....is there any specific chipset i need to consider, or at least to avoid? How much ram would I need at least?

And finally, where can I find some tutorials?

Not an AMD expert but I haven't heard of the 1050T, only 1055T.

If it were the 1055T you were talking about then the Ryzen 5 1600 is more than powerful enough.

 

In terms of motherboard, I recommend getting a Gigabyte board because it allows you to pick which PCIe slot as the primary display aka Initial Display Output i.e. what Unraid boots with. If you need an additional GPU (super low-end one will do) for Unraid to boot with so having that option helps save you from wasting the fast 1st PCIe slot.

While it's possible to pass through an only / primary GPU, having a 2nd GPU just makes life much easier so getting a Gigabyte mobo will leave that option open for you.

 

16GB RAM is a decent amount, half for the Sims VM and half for Unraid.

 

Tutorials, just search SpaceInvader One on Youtube.

 

 

 

Yes, it's the 1055T.....funny because the latest version of cpuID sees it as 1050T !

Would such card be OK:

https://www.microcenter.com/product/510208/gigabyte-b450m-ds3h-amd-am4-matx-motherboard

 

Also, I'm using a LSI SATA/SAS 9211-8i 6Gb/S PCI-Express 2.0 RAID Controller Card....does that mean the card above is not good if I want to use 2 GPU? 

Edited January 23, 20206 yr by French-Guy

I can get that used Ryzen 5 1600 for $30....is it a good deal?

It was only used for something like 6 months 

Assuming the R5 1600 is a good deal, I will probably buy it

Like I said, I would like to use it in my server to rip my bluray collection with MakeMKV and Handbrake

I cannot add an optical drive into my case.....can I add an external bluray drive (USB or e-Sata)?

 

Is it only Gigabyte that allows to pick which PCie will be used as primary display?

I purchase the Ryzen 5 1600 for $30...........need to find a motherboard that will take my current LSI SATA/SAS 9211-8i board, my current GTX950 for the windows 10VM to play Sims and.............do i need another super cheap card for debug?

I'm considering that one for now:

 https://www.microcenter.com/product/510208/gigabyte-b450m-ds3h-amd-am4-matx-motherboard

So it means the cheap graphic board will have to be a PCI-e x1?

 

 

Only Gigabyte allows picking which PCIe as initial display.

Note: ONLY x16 length slots.

x1 length slot is not pick-able.

 

For the board you quoted, the GTX 950 is likely to occupy 2 slots so it will cover the x1 slot.

You can only put the lowend GPU on the bottom most slot, which means you should get a single-slot width GPU.

If your GTX 950 is the 2.5-slot width type then there's no where to put anything else.

 

If you add the LSI then you have to use ATX motherboard (or try your luck with passing through single GPU).

What happened with non-Gigabyte motherboard then? With 2 GPU (low end and high end), how Unraid will decide which one to use as the primary display?

Assuming I decide to NOT use a low end card, but just the one I have (GTX 950)............how would this work then?

15 minutes ago, French-Guy said:

What happened with non-Gigabyte motherboard then? With 2 GPU (low end and high end), how Unraid will decide which one to use as the primary display?

Assuming I decide to NOT use a low end card, but just the one I have (GTX 950)............how would this work then?

Unraid does NOT decide which card to boot with.

That is controlled by the BIOS. Most mobo BIOS will pick the 1st PCIe slot by default if there's a GPU there with no other option.

 

So if you use a single GPU then by default Unraid will boot with that.

If you pass it through to the VM then Unraid will lose the display (until the next reboot - there's no way to pass the GPU back to Unraid OS once passed through to a VM - but you can pass the GPU to a different VM).

OK, thanks....I was watching SpaceInvader One video ("How to setup a Windows 10 VM")

Wow, great video.............but it seems complex somehow

Anyway, I really liked the explanation on how to allocate the logical CPUs, but now I have a question:

since resources need to be properly allocated between Unraid and the VM, does that mean I will never have the same "power" than a dedicated computer (for video encoding for example)?