New to unRAID, Looking for Community Advice!

[wabniky]

Hello all o/

 

I've recently looked back into unRAID after roughly a year and a half of being on and off building a virtualized gaming center (from 2 gamers 1 cpu; https://youtu.be/LuJYMCbIbPk) and am at a turning point with my PC (Thanks to issues with my Windows 10 install) where I want to switch the OS to unRAID to better manage my hardware and efficiency.

 

I'd like to have my PC be always on so I can access it while I'm traveling but I don't want to pay out the rear for a power bill. I don't know if virtualization would be the solution but I'd rather that then to find a way to set up Wake on LAN and a Raspberry Pi. 

 

The other thought I have is that I have the Shield TV K1 that I use regularly with my PC to play GTA5 on my TV in 4K. BUT!, I use my computer at a triple 1080p monitor setup for racing games (and GTA5) and I don't like switching between the spanned display option in Nvidia and the regular split display for single monitor games. I saw before a video saying I can store the game files in one place and play them in different VMs (not simultaneously). But I feel as if this would cause issues with changing resolutions. So maybe put a file in place of the file that stores the graphics properties that would direct the game to a local file with the appropriate settings. (shot in the dark at those who might have an idea to put with my ramblings)

 

I'm sure I can find some sort of other stuff to do on the PC if I were to virtualize it but none of which I can think of right now. Open to any and all suggestions if this will work with my hardware.  

 

 

PC Specs;

Motherboard: EVGA SR-2
CPU: 2x Intel Xeon X5690

Primary Game Storage: ASUS RAIDR 240GB MLC SSD

Secondary SSD: SAMSUNG 840 EVO 500GB TLC SSD

Tertiary SSD: 2x Intel 730 Series 480GB MLC SSD

HDD: 2x Seagate Desktop 2TB HDD

Case: NZXT Phantom 820

PSU: EVGA SuperNOVA NEX1500 Classified

GPU: EVGA 1080 Ti FTW3

CPU Cooler: 2x NZXT Kraken X42

RAM: 40GB ECC RAM

Edited July 17, 2017 by wabniky

[wabniky]

Update on one of the issues I mentioned;

 

I can run one VM with the GPU pass through and have the resolution set to 5760x1080 and let Nvidia adjust game settings whenever I want to cast to my TV or any other gamestream ready device. That enables me to natively play all the games I want on the battle station in surround and with a few clicks be able to cast them to my TV if I so choose. 

 

That leaves one inquiry left; power consumption if only the management OS is active. Does this burn a hole in my wallet? Should I look to an alternative solution? Has anyone looked into it yet? If not I'll jump in and do some science in this b----!

[CHBMB]

I guess the hardware is going to have a "baseline" power pull.  After that it's going to de dependent on CPU & GPU work, disk access/spin up or down.

 

II can't imagine they'd be much difference for two different operating systems assuming all the above is equal.

 

I suppose dynamic power management would be os dependent so it may boil down to whether Windows or Unraid/Linux is more aggressive/efficient in that regard.

 

I'm not a gamer so can't help with the other stuff.

 

Only other thought I've had is I wouldn't rely on Unraid to wake from sleep, as far as I'm aware I'm not sure it's officially supported for Unraid to sleep/hibernate so I would bear that in mind.  I know people have successfully done this in the past, but also I know there are others who could not get it working reliably.

 

 

[wabniky]

Thanks for the feedback! I'll definitely have to play around with it when I get it running. I already basically bite the bullet now with the power bill so this will either be a pleasant surprise or an expected result