98
Fully Virtualized Gaming Server?
(lemmy.ml)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2024
98 points (95.4% liked)
Selfhosted
62018 readers
1109 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil.
-
No spam.
-
Posts are to be related to self-hosting.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.
-
Submission headline should match the article title.
-
No trolling.
-
Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.
-
AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Yeah, but if you're this deep into the self hosting rabbit hole what circumstances lead to having an extra GPU laying around without an extra everything else, even if it's relartively underpowered? You'll probably be able to upgrade it later by recycling whatever is in your nice PC next time you upgrade something.
At this point most of my household is running some frankenstein of phased out parts just to justify my main build. It's a bit of a problem, actually.
I have upgraded my GPU on my desktop without upgrading anything else. Leaving me with a spare GPU and no other hardware.
Self hosting, I have also pulled GPUs out of systems to keep the power requirements down. As most of the time onboard GPUs are just fine for Self hosting applications. Also leaving me with a spare GPU.
However over the years GPUs have because more popular for processing there are more arguments to keep the GPU in a home server. So I can see how this is going away.
Mainly because running multiple desktop machines adds up to a lot of power, even at idle. If you power them off and on as needed it's better, but then it's not as convenient. Of course, if you leave a single machine with multiple GPUs on 24/7 that will also eat a lot of power, but it will be less than multiple machines turned on 24/7 at least.
And the physical space taken up by multiple desktop machines starts to add up significantly, particularly if you live in an apartment or smaller house.
I guess that depends on the use case and how frequently both machines are running simultaneously. Like I said, that reasoning makes a lot of sense if you have a bunch of users coming and going, but the OP is saying it's two instances at most, so... I don't know if the math makes virtualization more efficient. It'd pobably be more efficient by the dollar, if the server is constantly rendering something in the background and you're only sapping whatever performance you need to run games when you're playing.
But the physical space thing is debatable, I think. This sounds like a chonker of a setup either way, and nothing is keeping you from stacking or rack-mounting two PCs, either. Plus if that's the concern you can go with very space-efficient alternatives, including gaming laptops. I've done that before for that reason.
I suppose it's why PC building as a hobbyist is fun, there are a lot of balance points and you can tweak a lot of knobs to balance many different things between power/price/performance/power consumption/whatever else.