Media server plus gaming system, one system or two?


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For the build I've been planning, I've basically been thinking of having Unraid as the base OS and running Windows 10 on top of it. The system would function both as a media server and as a gaming system. I know this can be done and that you can even setup which CPU cores to dedicate to Unraid and which ones to leave for other functions, as I've seen this done in a Youtube video. Now that I'm getting further along with my planning, I'm starting to wonder if this would be the best setup to do. As I have no experience with Unraid or with setting up any server at all yet, I'm hoping the community will be able to offer me some advice. What I'm wondering about now is whether it would be worth considering two separate systems instead of combining them into one as described above. Since I'm both designing and building my own "case" for the build, I can manage to get both systems into a single case. I'm not concerned about heat or noise as I believe I'll have that part covered. As the total cost of the project will run into the thousands anyway, I believe the additional cost of a micro ATX motherboard and a low budget Ryzen CPU (and whatever other parts required) would likely be relatively negligible. So for my questions, you may assume that factors like cost, heat, noise and aesthetics may be disregarded, and focus entirely on the practical implications.

 

Edit: One other thing I forgot to mention and which is probably worth considering, is that my wife and stepdaughter would also be using the gaming system and use it for watching media purposes as well, and I wouldn't want them to have anything to do with the media server aspect of things.

 

  • What are the pros and cons for running a Windows 10 gaming system on top of an Unraid media server?
  • What are the pros and cons for running a Windows 10 gaming system and and an Unraid media server separately from each other?

 

And as side-questions...

 

  • If you run the two systems separately from each other, could you run them off the same PSU?
  • Would it be better to run each system on their own PSU or would it be better to combine them?
  • What are the practical implications of using one PSU versus two separate ones?
Edited by Stonelesscutter
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I can see some key factors that would swing you one way or the other.

  1. Your skill level, ability to follow instructions / guidance / advice and general savviness with IT stuff. Setting up a 2-in-1 can vary from easy to impossible, even when things are generally easier with Unraid than other OS I have dealt with.
  2. The ability to accept that some things won't work or won't work perfectly in a VM. For example, passing through Vega / Navi / iGPU / AMD graphics / Nvidia graphics / USB controller / onboard audio may or may not work. Some USB devices don't work if connected through libvirt. And so on.
    If you desire for things to "just work" then you have a much better chance with 2 baremetal systems.
  3. Your desire for best possible performance. Having 2 baremetal systems will give you the best and most consistent performance. A 2-in-1 carries compromises (most notably inconsistent frame rate aka lag) that may not show up on a benchmark but may annoy you in day-to-day uses.
    Note: core isolation is not the cure-all of lags. It helps a lot but for example, under heavy IO, lag is a more-or-less and not a yes-or-no.

 

With regards to PSU, I don't trust sharing PSU among multiple systems. That is just asking for trouble in my opinion.

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23 minutes ago, Jason Harris said:

What do you mean "Windows 10 on top of UnRAID"?  I don't follow that.

I've seen videos of Unraid running and Windows being started from Unraid. Maybe by means of a docker? I'm not sure how it all works really because I've been focusing almost entirely on hardware and design so far. I'm happy to take on advice or suggestions about this in any case.

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15 minutes ago, testdasi said:

I can see some key factors that would swing you one way or the other.

  1. Your skill level, ability to follow instructions / guidance / advice and general savviness with IT stuff. Setting up a 2-in-1 can vary from easy to impossible, even when things are generally easier with Unraid than other OS I have dealt with.
  2. The ability to accept that some things won't work or won't work perfectly in a VM. For example, passing through Vega / Navi / iGPU / AMD graphics / Nvidia graphics / USB controller / onboard audio may or may not work. Some USB devices don't work if connected through libvirt. And so on.
    If you desire for things to "just work" then you have a much better chance with 2 baremetal systems.
  3. Your desire for best possible performance. Having 2 baremetal systems will give you the best and most consistent performance. A 2-in-1 carries compromises (most notably inconsistent frame rate aka lag) that may not show up on a benchmark but may annoy you in day-to-day uses.
    Note: core isolation is not the cure-all of lags. It helps a lot but for example, under heavy IO, lag is a more-or-less and not a yes-or-no.

 

With regards to PSU, I don't trust sharing PSU among multiple systems. That is just asking for trouble in my opinion.

Thanks! From the arguments you made, plus my own argument of family members having to be able to use the system, it seems I would be better off running two separate systems. This would mean I'd have to re-think my current design, but thankfully this is all still possible and I haven't started fabricating anything yet.

 

That said, I'd be happy to see more users weigh in with their thoughts and experiences. I was kinda expecting this to potentially be a "loaded" subject, but perhaps it isn't at all.

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Yea, I think you're better suited for running two systems - one for UnRAID and a 2nd system for gaming.

 

You can run Windows 10 in a VM in UnRAID and pass through the GPU, but now you have a new challenge of how to properly stream the game from the VM to another computer. 

 

Advantage there is that you can play any game you want from any computer you want.  I do this. 

 

Disadvantage is that you now have an extra layer of complexity that can fail, and if it fails you'll probably spend more time trying to fix it than you'd like.  And trust me, as a father and husband, an angry wife and kids is no way to spend a weekend :)

 

Edit:  Another disadvantage is that video streaming will be horrible.  Watching an h.264 or h.265 video using a remote desktop viewing program, no matter the tech, is very problematic and introduces a lot of jitter.

Edited by Jason Harris
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5 minutes ago, Jason Harris said:

You can run Windows 10 in a VM in UnRAID and pass through the GPU, but now you have a new challenge of how to properly stream the game from the VM to another computer. 

 

Advantage there is that you can play any game you want from any computer you want. I do this.

I'm intrigued by this but am not sure what you mean exactly. The idea was to just have a gaming system in the living room. If I'm interpreting what you said correctly, using Unraid, my stepdaughter could for example play a game in her room on her laptop, which is actually running on the system in the living room?

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Now I'm considering two systems in one case, another thing I'm pondering on is how to arrange fan control. I guess since the Unraid system would be most likely the one running continuously, it might be best to have this system control the fans for the entire case. But then, let's say this system is not running, and the gaming system is running, there would be no airflow to cool the gaming system. Is there a way to have a fan controller configured to run on multiple systems?

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22 minutes ago, Stonelesscutter said:

I'm intrigued by this but am not sure what you mean exactly. The idea was to just have a gaming system in the living room. If I'm interpreting what you said correctly, using Unraid, my stepdaughter could for example play a game in her room on her laptop, which is actually running on the system in the living room?

Correct, if using Steam.  You install the Steam client on the VM and pass through the GPU to the VM.  Then, on the 'client' (laptop, whatever), you launch Steam and use the in-home streaming feature.  You can stream the game, and the VM does all of the work, while the client just displays what the VM is presenting.

 

Not sure if Epic or GOG or other launchers support this.

 

Edit:  And that's not just on UnRAID, that's on any solution you choose to go with if UnRAID doesn't work for you.

Edited by Jason Harris
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4 minutes ago, Jason Harris said:

Correct, if using Steam.  You install the Steam client on the VM and pass through the GPU to the VM.  Then, on the 'client' (laptop, whatever), you launch Steam and use the in-home streaming feature.  You can stream the game, and the VM does all of the work, while the client just displays what the VM is presenting.

 

Not sure if Epic or GOG or other launchers support this.

 

Edit:  And that's not just on UnRAID, that's on any solution you choose to go with if UnRAID doesn't work for you.

So technically, this could still be done on the Windows 10 system itself?

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If that meets your needs, yep.  Not that I want to steal away a license from UnRAID lol.  You could just run Plex on a bare-metal Windows 10 system and use Docker to do what you want.  You'll want to look up 'Storage Spaces' on Windows 10 so you can set up a RAID-5 array (software RAID), or use the Intel RAID controller if you have one for a pseudo-hardware RAID array.  

 

Then you could just run games from the server, while it serves media to everything else in the background.  There will be some overhead for CPU cycles while you're using it for gaming, but it shouldn't impact Plex or Emby or anything.

Edited by Jason Harris
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