Im buy a NAS with an i3 4160 and I want to use freenas with a jail that is using half of the cpus cores. Will I be able to dedicate an r9 270x to the jail/VM? Or would I have to use some other version of linux and run freenas in that and another Vm for the windows machine with the 270x
First, don't run Freenas in a VM.
Jails only run other versions of BSD.
Freenas has virtual box but you won't be able to pass through a GPU with it. KVM, Xen or ESXI can do that though.
What are you tying to do?
well im getting a NAS with an i3 4160/maybe an fx 8350 and I have a spare 270x and I want to be able to run the nas and a windows operating system on the same machine with the 270x on the windows so I can play games on it.
That won't work. Also ZFS is pretty system intensive.
You could run Linux with ZFS or BTRFs with a Network share set up and run steam with that or even try to have a Windows VM with the 270 passed through via KVM or Xen.
But I would not want my files on a gaming machine like that. Especially since they will most likely be sharing the same NIC or bridge. That is a security risk.
Also I would look for a used Xeon with some used ECC RAM for a NAS instead of consumer hardware.
Well I already have a gaming pc I just want it so when people come over they can play as well. I can use the on board ethernet for the VM and the intel nic for the NAS?
I'm in AU so its pretty hard to find second hand parts.
You would want to pass through the PCIe Nic to the Windows VM. For ease of use you would want a set a web control panel like webmin to administer the server remotely.
Do you have any experience with Linux?
yes I have a little experience of linux
Well what you want to do isn't the easiest thing to do so be warned.
Also use the INTEL CPU so the base machine has the on chip GPU to work with.
ye well I will probably not do it then.
Well I have about $200 AUD what do you recommend for a CPU ?
I think you have a misconception of what jails are, they are not VMs they are isolated areas for programs to run in that protect the operating system from any harm, so you could have a program like Plex running in a jail and if it got corrupted it would have no effect on FreeNas, you can not control the resources allocated to a jail in FreeNas the operating system takes total control of that.
This isn't a function you can do with FreeNas, as others have said Linux is where you want to be for this type of setup but what you are purposing really defeats the purpose of a NAS which is normally 24-7 access to files served up for network clients. You could I guess use the i3 in a dual boot configuration with Linux and Windows partitions (Linux as a file server and Windows as a gaming platform) but to do a hardware pass through in Linux isn't something you just do it requires lots of planning on both the hardware and software sides, which Linux distro you choose will make a huge difference in if you can even accomplish a successful hardware pass through.
And just a word of advice....you would be better off with the 8350 if hardware pass through is your goal, but there are lots of other considerations depending on your end goals, your going to want duplicates of lots of hardware devices like your NIC, sound card, GPU, and USB to have a successful KVM running Windows on top of a Linux host because not everything can be shared virtually and have a platform that is enjoyable playing games in.
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This may meet your needs ZFS and KVM in one an easy package:
https://smartos.org/2011/08/15/kvm-on-illumos/
It is based on Solaris so not too different than BSD and Linux