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Hey everyone,
It’s been a while since my last build and wanted to get some advice and a sanity check. My plan was to originally virtualize my gaming in order to keep the server running but have resigned to a dual boot due to cost. Flexible $2000 budget in the US.

Purpose:

  • Proxmox Hypervisor
  • Open Media Vault NAS VM w/HDD passthrough
  • Home Assistant VM w/ USB passthrough for Zigbee or other network protocol
  • Ubuntu 24.04 VM w/ (GPU/USB/NIC/Audio) passthrough as daily usage
    -Frigate and Local LLM related containers running within Ubuntu for gpu acceleration with isolated NIC for surveillance
  • Windows 11 on separate boot for 1440 strategy/sim/rpg gaming

Wants:

  • Raid 1 boot drive with cpu lanes for both drives
  • Minimize power without compromising gaming ability
  • Maximize ram with cost/benefit in mind
  • Dual Nic’s that are in separate Immou groups or add-on

Have:

  • Silverstone FT02 Case but exploring BeQuiet Silent Base 802 Inverted
  • NH-D14 cooler but open to replacement
  • Hdd’s and Sata Ssd from old PC until replacement is needed.

Thank you for any advice you can offer!

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7700X 4.5 GHz 8-Core Processor ($273.98 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14 64.95 CFM CPU Cooler (Purchased For $0.00)
Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX V2 ATX AM5 Motherboard ($185.44 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws S5 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory ($191.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 870 Evo 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (Purchased For $0.00)
Storage: Solidigm P44 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($87.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Solidigm P44 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($87.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate ST1000DM004 1 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $0.00)
Storage: Seagate ST1000DM004 1 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $0.00)
Video Card: MSI GeForce RTX 3060 Ventus 2X 12G GeForce RTX 3060 12GB 12 GB Video Card ($285.00 @ Amazon)
Case: Silverstone FT02B-USB3.0 ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For $0.00)
Power Supply: SeaSonic FOCUS Plus Platinum 750 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($114.99 @ Newegg)
Wired Network Adapter: TP-Link TG-3468 Gigabit Ethernet PCIe x1 Network Adapter ($14.99 @ Amazon)
Monitor: LG 27GL83A-B 27.0" 2560 x 1440 144 Hz Monitor ($251.98 @ Amazon)
Total: $1494.35
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-06-20 19:57 EDT-0400

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  1. partlist is ok . not 100% clear on Amd cpus… so more familiar with intel… i like to have more cores / threads for the price over speed… But amd may offer better power saving…
  2. The only reason to change things is if you want a more aesthetic build… for example… i would advise deepcool assassin 4 and a more contemporary case …
  3. as long as you have planned the hardware capacity vs software requirements
  • will the cpu have enough cores or threads, memory etc…?
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Thank you for the response mailman,

I wish Intel was a little more generous with their pcie IO. It would have opened up more choices for motherboards and offered quicksync with the integrated graphics.

I’m not as concerned about aesthetics as I am silence. Multiple hhd’s will need the acoustic dampening.

I am unclear as to the hardware demands of my virtualization software so I sized primarily to the gaming demands.
I picked the 7700x 8 core because it afforded the most cores with the power saving of just a single CCD, and hopefully better binned to accommodate the increased TDP. I planned on TDP limiting it down if it was excessive.
I sized up as much as i could with the ram and stopped at the 64 gigs of DDR5 6000 because the cost of 96 gigs was double for 50% increase.
Hopefully it’s overkill but probably not with minimal LLM running.

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Randy86, In running virtualization that should be fine cpu. I believe the build should be fine. The real question is does the motherboard correctly support sr-iov. The other item I would look at is does nic on mainboard work with virtualization. Proxmox is less picky then esxi. Have good nic in virtualization can make or break long term. If the board has Realtek nic those are generally connect though usb. Not as stable. Thought that what I found esxi. When I built my proxmox machine already found nics that I like. Also the machine tri boots Esxi,Proxmox and windows 11

When you put the machine together turn on intergrate gpu support on mainboard. It usually better in long run to have the host os have gpu that it can see. Ran passthough intel gpu into proxmox had to unload the gpu drivers for passthough to work. Also nvidia cards are generally much easier to passthough run full time. One the only reason I generally ran NVIDIA card that I passthough.
When I did passthough I found that Popos worked better then straight Ubuntu. I generally had to mess around bit get ubuntu work as passthough guest os. Although I understand esxi better then proxmox. When I built my proxmox machine I repeated lot things I did esxi. If you have any specfic questions. Many people on this site that can help.

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Nothing particularly wrong with the parts, but:

  • The 7700 draws less power, costs $246 and is within striking distance of the 7700X in terms of performance. Granted you can play around with undervolt settings on the 7700X and achieve a similar result.
  • Similarly, the 7700X at $273 makes the Ryzen 9 7900 at $369 an interesting option. 50% more cores for 35% more price is not that bad of a deal, though $329 like the 7900X3D would have been better.
  • If you do not have much in terms of storage needs, decent 2TB TLC SSDs like the Crucial P3 2TB can be had for less than $120 and SATA 2.5" drives are available below $100, though most are QLC. It’s not exactly performance drives, but it is still better than most HDDs, and they produce no noise.
  • The 3060 for $285 is a bit of lackluster when you can reach just slightly more and get a 7600 XT for $299 or the A770 for $279. Twice the VRAM will make the card age a lot better, and I would go for those two over the 3060 even if they cost slightly more. Leave the 8GB cards for the sub $250 range. It all depends on what you want to do in the end, but both 3060s and 6700 XTs are meh when there are 16 GB cards available at roughly the same pricepoint or lower.
  • 64 GB RAM is kind of overkill for most, 32GB is plenty enough and would save you ~$100. It is a matter of priorities though.

These are mostly nitpicks though. Overall, you got a solid build with a few interesting alternatives to consider. I’d give it an A-, but then I tend to try to build small (in space, not money). :slight_smile:

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Thank you for the reply bobjones,
I couldn’t find any info on sr-iov support. I would have to wait for someone who has this motherboard to chime in. I did check the nic and it is a Realtek, but it seems to be off the pcie 3.0 bus.
I ran into that issue trying to passthrough my laptops integrated graphics to Ubuntu. I plan on leaving the integrated graphics to the host and putting all gpu functionality in the Ubuntu vm.
Hopefully I can get the Ubuntu to work with passthrough. Otherwise I’ll have to find a new GUI OS to run my containers in. I’m sure I’ll have questions once I get my hands on some hardware.

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Thanks for the reply Wertigon,
I like the idea of dropping to the 7700. I looked into it and supposedly can get 30% power savings with a 7% drop in performance. Using the lower TDP would also save me a couple watts by eliminating a CPU cooling fan.
I planned on eventually getting some cheap SSDs for my NAS but I still need HDDs for the surveillance.
Unfortunately, I am limited to Nvidia with my Frigate and Home Assistant GPU integrations.
64GB is overkill but running short in a server environment would mean a costly upgrade/replacement. I wanted the buffer in case I play with ZFS and I have available budget for it.

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