I have an 11th gen i7 and 128G DDR4. My Gigabyte mobo has no ability to segregate PCI devices for pass through in TruNAS or Proxmox. BIOS features are about the hardest thing to compare on mobos. Does anyone know of any “consumer” mobos with better IOMMU features? Or am I pretty much stuck with a “server” class board? For home lab tinkering I’d rather not pay $500+ for a mobo.
Good IOMMU grouping typically only comes with server/workstation-grade motherboards.
How much computing power do you need?
Plan to get a board old enough to use my existing i7 and mem. Just homelab tinkering. Need a slot for the 5060TI, HBA and 10G cards.
Workstation LGA1200 boards that take non ECC RAM and an i7 do exist, but they are rare and I havent seen them on the used market. Also the i7 only has 20 pcie lanes.
I would save up for something like this:
W480 or W580 boards. At some point, stocks may be liquidated for less than $500 apiece…
x8 for GPU, x8 for HBA (if passing through a properly isolated chipset controller is not an option), and ideally x4 for the NIC: It may pass with the right distribution of slots. Otherwise, put the NIC on chipset lanes.
But x8/x8 bifurcation is a must.
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=W480D4U#Specifications
https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X12SCA-F
https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X12SAE-5
Server boards can be affordable… but you’re locking yourself in with this i7-11xxx.
Maybe changing the CPU for AM4 Ryzen or 9th gen/Xeon E-2100/2200, keeping your RAM, could be an option?
I suppose I’ll wait for Goldeye with the new Nvidia drivers. Then see what I can accomplish with Docker images. I can’t justify the cost of any newer hardware for my hobby needs. I really appreciate the comments and suggestions. I may keep an eye on Ebay. It’s funny, I have bought used Dell 2U servers locally for under $1k with dual Xeons for work. But at home I have no place to put a noisy monster like that.
I bought the Supermicro X12SCZ-QF-B on Amazon for a very reasonable price.