Adding a Riser Card to a Server Board For Video Out

[brando56894]

I just bought a SuperMico MBD-X10SDV-F-0 to replace my AsRock C2750-D4I (which mysteriously died), but the problem is that it only has one PCIe slot, which is in use by my Intel HBA. I'd like to add decent video output to it so that I can use a VM as a Linux desktop that runs KDE, since the onboard video is only 1024x768. I don't need anything special, just a single slot video card with single HDMI out.

I found this riser card: http://goo.gl/Fioy1I which theoretically should work, but I run into another issue: I have the SilverStone DS380 case which has next to no space inside, I had to slightly mod it to begin with to fit my HBA in there without sacrificing a drive slot. I previously purchased a PCIe extension cable for another build and didn't need it and I had the idea of mounting the HBA and a videocard, along with the riser card, outside of the case, but I have no idea how to mount them.

I did find external PCIe enclosures, but they huge and pretty expensive, I also found single PCIe enclosures for beefy video cards but they all have thunderbolt ports, which I don't have. I'll probably have to build something myself or see if my friend can 3D print something for me, but he's a few states away.

Does anyone have any other ideas?

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[INCSlayer]

and how are you going to get the VM to display its output on the card?

 

[jgreco]

and how are you going to get the VM to display its output on the card?

Presumably a competent hypervisor like ESXi, virtualizing both FreeNAS and a desktop OS via VT-d.

Not a great idea, and with a Xeon D the lack of PCIe options is nearly crippling.

 

[brando56894]

Presumably a competent hypervisor like ESXi, virtualizing both FreeNAS and a desktop OS via VT-d.

Not a great idea, and with a Xeon D the lack of PCIe options is nearly crippling.

This is my first Xeon, so what do you mean by "lack of PCI options", do you just mean that there aren't enough slots or that specifically the processor doesn't support virtual access to the PCI bus? I was planning on messing around with ESXi just for the hell of it, but if this won't work, it won't be a deal breaker. I'll just end up getting an Intel NUC or something else to use as a desktop when I have the money. Sometimes it's just nice to be able to pull up a desktop in the VM that you're working to do some things more quickly.

I'm trying to downsize all my equipment since I live in a small apartment outside of NYC, and plan on moving to the city in the near future. Originally I had everything in my full tower case, which handled both desktop and server duties. I built the NAS to handle the server and storage duties and realized that I didn't need this giant case anymore since it only had 2 HDDs and one video card in it. So I built a Steam Machine in a HTPC case and I currently use that as a Windows desktop also.

I currently live by myself in what is essentially a studio, but when I live with someone else the Steam Machine will be going out in the living room, so I'd like to have a desktop in my room for whenever I need it, which probably wouldn't be that often, since I largely do a lot of my computing on my Google Pixel C tablet (for example I'm writing this post using it and a full bluetooth keyboard). I just need something to use whenever my tablet or Nexus 6 screws up and I need to use ADB/Fastboot, or for when I want to work on my webserver easily for extended periods of time, since Android isn't really useful for multi-tasking yet. I have a Zotac Pico but that will only run Windows and is pretty slow, I also have two HardKernel ARM based Odroids that I can easily run Linux on, but once again, they're still kind of slow and the graphics chips aren't the best outside out Android.

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