Hey there, I'm not exactly looking for help or support, but if you DO have a good solution to my problem below, I'd like to hear it. Mostly just want to share my story haha:

 

I recently upgraded some hardware in my unRaid machine because i got my hands on a 9960X.

 

My case is a Node 804 so I had to get myself a mATX X299 board, specifically the x299 Micro ATX 2 from EVGA. Because x299 doesn't have iGPU, I also got myself a GT 710 to dedicate to unRaid, to go along with my 1660ti and ATA card.

 

Got everything hooked up, putting the GT 710 in the x4 slot, 1660ti in the top x16 slot, and the ATA card in the middle x16 slot.

 

This entire setup was based around the assumption that the supporting BIOS would support selecting the primary display device, but it does NOT.

 

So now I'm stuck because I want the GT 710 dedicated to the unraid UI, with the 1660ti being passed through to a Windows 10 VM. and since the ATA card takes the other x16 slot, I don't have any feasible solution to fixing my problem unless:

1) EVGA makes a BIOS solution (unlikely)

2) unRaid OS has its own support for booting and displaying on an alternate PCIe device (unlikely)

3) i buy new components (motherboard, case) to get a working PCIe device layout (expensive)

 

this is quite an annoying and unfortunate situation to be in, because aesthetically, everything about my unRaid machine is perfect, it's just this small lack of functionality on the motherboard that ruined the whole thing lol

I'm not a VM guy, but have you tried "stubbing" the card so that Unraid won't use it? (install the VFIO plugin to make things easier on 6.8)

2 minutes ago, AreYouDeeWhy said:

I want the GT 710 dedicated to the unraid UI

Why not run headless?

CSM - Compatibility Support Module (Bios Setting) - enabled, may force the board to boot from from a Chipset GPU. The x4 is connected to the PCH (chipset).

 

PCI-E 2.0 x 4 is enough for 8 HDD, PCI-E 3.0 x4 is enough for 16 HDD with no loss in speed. Could you use a x4 to x8 / x16 riser for the ATA card with the GT710 in the second slot. Assuming your ATA card is half height.

You can dump (or download) the vbios for the 1660ti and add it to the XML so unraid will pass off the primary GPU to the windows VM, however be prepared for some occasionally weirdness. I tried it for a while, but had issues with rebooting the VM, etc. It's best to find some way to rearranged your hardware (what I ended up doing).