Need help in order to move into unraid world.

[xabi]

Hi there:

 

I'm new to the forum and I hope to be an unraid user soon, but I have some questions and I would like someone to help me with them.

Right now I have a PC that I use with windows and I play from time to time with it. I also have a qnap NAS with 48T, plex and all that stuff.

My idea is to replace everything with a PC on which I mount a unraid.

 

Doubts:

1.- I have seen many gaming videos with unraid (video card passthrough), etc. What I don't understand is how to start the windows virtual machine to play. I will need another computer to connect to unRaid and start it, right? Is there any other method? If someone uses unRaid with a virtual machine to play I would like you to tell me how you do it and what your experience has been.

2.- If I buy a motherboard with 8 SATA ports should be enough or do you recommend me to buy a PCI card with the SATA ports?

3.- You can passthrough the USB ports of the board or you have to buy a USB ports PCI card.

4.- Same as above but with respect to the sound card.

 

Thanks in advance:

 

xabi

 

Edited October 1, 2020 by xabi

[Cpt. Chaz]

On 10/1/2020 at 11:02 AM, xabi said:

Hi there:

 

I'm new to the forum and I hope to be an unraid user soon, but I have some questions and I would like someone to help me with them.

Right now I have a PC that I use with windows and I play from time to time with it. I also have a qnap NAS with 48T, plex and all that stuff.

My idea is to replace everything with a PC on which I mount a unraid.

 

Doubts:

1.- I have seen many gaming videos with unraid (video card passthrough), etc. What I don't understand is how to start the windows virtual machine to play. I will need another computer to connect to unRaid and start it, right? Is there any other method? If someone uses unRaid with a virtual machine to play I would like you to tell me how you do it and what your experience has been.

2.- If I buy a motherboard with 8 SATA ports should be enough or do you recommend me to buy a PCI card with the SATA ports?

3.- You can passthrough the USB ports of the board or you have to buy a USB ports PCI card.

4.- Same as above but with respect to the sound card.

 

Thanks in advance:

 

xabi

 

Xabi,

 

Typically the forums stay chatty, but occasionally some slip through. Assuming it's not too late, let me offer my $.02

 

1. First off i have to say that i don't game with my rig. i also run my server(s) headless, so 98% of the time I access from a browser on another computer. That said, i found what looks like a good tutorial by none other than spaceinvader one on youtube that shows exactly how to do it all with one machine. If you are limited to accessing the unraid UI from only one computer (assuming the computer running the server and the VMs) keep in mind that unraid can also be accessed by phone browsers.

 

2. This is totally subjective. depends on how many parity drives you want, what size drives you have/ want, and your storage needs. 8 seems like plenty of sata ports to me, especially if you happen to have any m.2 ports, or spare pci ports to run your cache drives on.

 

3. yes, you can pass through onboard USB ports. depending on how many you have, you may need to break up their iommu groupings to pass through certain ones. this can be slightly tedious if you're new to unraid and spaceinvader one again has a good tutorial on this here. however, given the cheap cost of pci usb cards, it may just be easier to pass through one of these cards and dedicate it to your VM

 

4. my experience of passthrough on these is that it's pretty straight forward. Just make sure to install all the necessary virt io linux drivers on the windows VM for the sound to work - it won't work right out of the gate. See spaceinvader here again.

 

This can seem daunting to a new user setting up. it will take an investment of time if you're learning all this on the fly, but don't be afraid to reach out to the support forums (which generally offer a faster response time that what you got here) and utilize the great resource of spaceinvader's tutorials on youtube. i and many others would tell you that once you get started and rolling on unraid, you'll never look back. good luck!