New PC. GPU passthrough on ITX ?

[FeralParticipant 98]

Hi guys.

I studied economics/finance but I love IT as a hobby. I enjoy:
– building a PC from scratch choosing each part.
– learning to program: I am into C# with Visual Studio.
– Virtual Reality and Unity3D as hobby.

I have a DAN Cases A4-SFX coming soon and it makes for a new build.
I am asking advice on choosing the mini-ITX board and moving to Linux.

I tried to move from Windows to Linux, for stealth reasons, with no success several times.

The last time, I built the smallest PC possible with a full-size GPU on mini-ITX board.
It took me a crazy amount of time to be able to boot in Linux while still being able to run a Windows Virtual Machine with GPU-passthrough.
In this way, I was able to run games and Unity3D at full speed with DX11 in the VM.

Unfortunately, the HTC Vive would not work in the VM.
I could not passthrough the USB 3.0 ports because of limitations of the mini-ITX board.

So, sadly, in the end I added Windows in dual boot.
Had the HTC Vive and Visual Studio working fine, and ended up never using the Linux boot again.

I guess that you guys will tell me to have two physical machines:
– one booting Linux (or BSD) just for the internet, and
– one booting Windows for VR, Visual Studio, all other activities and hobbies.

But, in case you guys know of a power efficient, mini-ITX board, that allows for passing-through both the GPU and some of the USB ports to a VM, please let me know.

[Psl47Participant 678]

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[FeralParticipant 98]

Yes, that is the case.

My last build was with a:
ASRock Z170 Gaming-ITX/AC S1151 M-ITX Intel Motherboard
SilverStone SST-SG13WB Sugo SFF
(and water cooling)

I could move the board from the SG13 to the DAN, but I was wondering whether there is mini-ITX board which allows for both:
– GPU-passthrough, as well as
– some (not all) USB ports passthorugh.

[SmeeParticipant 228]

More info needed before a solution can be offered.

What is your Host OS/Version and what is your Guest ?
What Virtual software/version are you using ?

I’d normally use linux as a host and windoze as VM.
For such a simple setup, I’d normally use Virtual Box.

Here are some links to look at:
“>From Virtual Box forum

Please note the detail from this post

Smee Again

[FeralParticipant 98]

I can use a different sw in the future.

For my last build (March 2016), I used KVM to achieve GPU-passthrough for Windows-guest.

For this new build, I would like Windows-10 guest.
Host can be anything, but I would prefer a Debian based distro, if possible, because that is what I learned last time.

But the problem is not software: the bottleneck is hardware.
Mini-ITX boards are very limited when it comes to hardware passthrough.

[SmeeParticipant 228]

Then I’d suggest using whatever linux variant you want – I use Mint Mate at the moment, with Virtual Box and guest Win 10 through that.

Only cost is the win10 licence

Smee Again

[FeralParticipant 98]

Thank you.

I was not aware that VirtualBox allows GPU passthrough.
Must be a new feature. I am glad that this feature is getting easier.
When it will become easy, Linux usage might start exploding for the desktop.

Windows 10 works well also without license, for the moment.
It only shows an “activate” message, no other meaningful limitations.
From within a Virtual Machine, its spying “features” are under control.

[Author]

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