$1,000 Proxmox server with GPU accelerated VMs?

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I’ve seen some YouTube videos about servers with GPU accelerated VMs. I’m pretty much ignorant of the topic, but it seems really cool.

I’m presently using an old Dell T130 server running Proxmox to take of care of my modest home lab. It has a Xeon CPU E3-1230 v5 @ 3.40GHz, 64 gig of ECC memory, and 3 SSDs: 1 for boot and 2 for VMs. While the power fluctuates, it probably averages out to 60 watts. As I’m typing this, the CPU is running at about 15%, and RAM usage is at about 86%.

I’d like to replace this old workhorse with something more modern; especially something which would allow Windows remote desktop to be more zippy.

I’d like to stay around $1,000 U.S. Is that even possible? I’m happy to buy or build. It doesn’t have to run Proxmox.

Any recommendations?

Thanks,
Steve

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start with creating a list on pcpartpicker or something this way you can tune your budget

I would recommend dual socket board and xeon CPU

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If you don’t need more than 2 VMs the most simple option is to have 2 GPUs, one for each VM?

There are officially supported ways to get virtualized GPUs for VMs but they are out of your budget. And there are hacky non-supported solutions that are in budget but require some expertise (and may break with e.g. software updates) like the Intel ARC cards.

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$1,000 Proxmox server with GPU accelerated VMs?

A simple question on its surface, but one which begets many questions, which need to be answered to obtain useful answers to the original question:

  • How many VMs need GPU acceleration?
  • What kind of acceleration? (Purpose)
  • What kind of performance?
  • Limited to a specific architecture/generation/model of GPU?

If you are asking whether it is possible, technically, the most basic Intel 12th generation CPU with an iGPU is capable of SR-IOV, which would let you provide GPUs to multiple VMs.

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