VM's and Gaming Focus, with an emphasis on World of Warcraft.
VM's and Gaming Focus, with an emphasis on World of Warcraft.
I possess three reasonably good gaming setups, suitable for my wife, daughter, and myself. Recently, we welcomed four new temporary visitors of varying ages (4 to 30) who also enjoy playing games. As a friendly and generous person, I considered configuring these guests with their own systems but building four separate machines on an existing network of about 25 devices—three of which run multiple nic servers over 10GbE copper/1GbE links. The hardware includes Broadcom 2x2 2-port 10Gbe NICs and several Dell PowerConnect switches on a dedicated subnet. Adding four gaming rigs costing around $1,500 each would be quite expensive. I explored adding two mid-range GPUs to two Proxmox servers, using PCIe passthrough for thin clients (keyboard, mouse, display) and deploying two VMs per server with 1.5TB DDR3 RAM (Dell PowerEdge 16 bay R820s). Since I already have all these components, I wondered if this approach could work and whether it would be practical.
Verify PCIE passthrough compatibility; it should function as expected. Expect additional complications moving forward. I’d opt for budget desktops instead of the $1.5k models—just an old OptiPlex would suit those GPUs, ideally under $300. Proxmox isn’t ideal for VDI, so consider Parsec for thin clients. If you’re serious about virtual machines, test PCIE passthrough first and check latency. What kind of thin clients are you planning to deploy?
From what I've gathered so far, the theory seems based on similar concepts I've seen before. What concerns me are the potential challenges involved. I'm not familiar with this approach, so I'm just being cautious. It would help to understand which aspects might be tricky. I haven't tried anything like this yet, so I'm asking honestly out of curiosity. My experience with GPUs and virtual machines is mostly standard setups—web servers, databases, domain controllers, apps, file servers, etc. Parsec seems comparable to MS Teams but simpler in scope. It works on a Windows 10 Pro VM with Proxmox. For thin clients, I was checking this link: https://www.newegg.com/hp-2dh78at-aba/p/0A5-0074-000J8
A few systems have strict requirements, but they should be fine as long as you verify first. It’s about network delays, lower picture quality, and more potential breakdowns. It doesn’t quite fit the usual setup—this isn’t for regular meetings or team collaboration. What kind of operating system would suit those needs? Proxmox isn’t ideal for video, so you’ll need to build your own thin clients yourself, which can be challenging.