Gaming PC with Proxmox as all in one solution ?
Question
Hi,
I am considering turning my gaming PC into a Proxmox Server. There are multiple reasons for it.
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I like to play from one device and doesn't want to switch all the time (Idea would be game streaming to my laptop)
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I would like to have a solution for home automation which runs locally
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I also need for my work sometimes quite some power at home, so it would be nice if I simply could access it from my work laptop.
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I want to upgrade it in the future. Right now I get a small server rack and put my PC in a special case in it, but I want to upgrade it in the near future.
Can I accomplish this with proxmox ? Or should I look for another solution ?
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Yes, you can do this with Proxmox. I game on my Proxmox machine with an Nvidia GPU and direct-attached monitor and USB peripherals (but you can stream the output remotely to another machine on the network using something like Moonlight instead).
However note that many competitive multiplayer games detect that you're playing in a VM and kick you out. If you play these then search r/vfio for the latest experience with them.
Nothing screams 'i need to run a hypervisor' to me there. Could accomplish everything you want there in windows 10 pro tbh and just run HomeAssistant in Hyper-V. If you don't have specific containerised workloads, segregated workloads, or backup/security requirements that mean towards virtualisation I wouldn't see proxmox as the ideal solution to your situation
Correct me if im wrong but i never had good experience with windows running 24/7 (which is an idea here for home assistant) - sooner or later always started to be unstable.
And power consumption is another interesting thing which i would love to see some comparison about -> i mean HA@windows10 vs HA@proxmox.
Buy a tiny/mini/micro/ for proxmox vms and 24/7 services. Use gaming pc just for gaming. Also you dont need proxmox for remote gaming.
I did this before when I had the Threadripper 1950x with two GPUs and a lot of RAM.
It actually works very well, at that time I was running RTX 2070 super and the frame rate was not much different than baremetal if only the gaming VM was running.
At that time RTX2000 had the USB-C port on the GPU which was ideal, it was passed through via VFIO together with the GPU. Sadly we don't have this anymore on the latest GPUs, which makes passing through the USB devices a bit less convenient and less responsive for reaction demanding games.
NVME SSD can be passed through as well, that also works very well.
You definitely can (and it’s kind of satisfying so if you’ve got even a small desire to try it, just do it). I run Debian 12 + Proxmox on my main workstation as I prefer to be in a Linux environment, then have a few different windows VMs running, one of which is a dedicated gaming streaming host with a 3060ti passed through. So if I want to play on the workstation, I just fire up the local Moonlight client.
i have a couple of games that i cant get working with a proxmox VM. Tried to hide that it was a vm from windows.
I run proxmox as my main gaming pc in the lounge. the experience has been overwhelmingly more controlled than having a bare metal windows box attached to the tv hooked up with a controller to play with.
yes its possible, just pass through the usb's you need, drives either virtual or physical and of course the iommu for pcie cards like your gpu, make sure you know what your doing take care reading the tutorials and take security measurements. Basically know the risks.
home assistant + n8n kind of thing? plenty of scripts out there that can do whatever your heard desires and that.
wireguard or openvpn kind of thing? as above....but you must establish what will its uses be primarily
following on the above, if its gaming it can be a showpiece why hide it, but if its more of a discrete computer you can just have it as a window remote for your own streamed games. depending on the hardware and what upgrades and also depending what os are you looking to run your games on. should it be windows or linux always check the hardware.
for example right now my limitation is having corsair vengence pro ram rgb not being easily configurable, i gotta passthrough the SMBus to the windows vm but that breaks proxmox so i can change the colors of the rgb on the ram. then go back to grub bootloader and remove the SMBus from the vm so it doesnt break proxmox anymore. thats every time i want something other than whatever i pick from last time. not pretty but its workable. everything else in it is flawless.
i picked proxmox because not only i can literally control paste my whole pc into another shell should i choose to do so with all of the configurations. it can also do periodic backups where say my game mods can break the system. just an easy revert especially if its a windows box.
only con is that boot times takes a little bit longer and usb passthrough can be a bit of a pain but to me it feels more safe. i know exactly what goes on that windows box and i know exactly what the box talks to and if i want to emulate something say windows 98 to play an older game i dont have to install and dual boot. i just do it straight as if its bare metal.