What’s a good, cheap, no external power GPU to buy for VMs? Want to chuck a few in my Dell R730 server to make my desktop VMs more usable. Right now have an old K620 for a Windows VM, seems like 1030s are a good bet since I have a bunch of low profile slots I otherwise have no use for.
I think the best slot powered GPU you can buy right now is a second-hand RTX A2000, specifically the 6GB VRAM version. It’s too expensive brand new, especially the 12GB version. But you might be lucky enough to grab a used one on the cheap.
If you are debating on eventually doing a media server, Arc 380 is small form factor, no external power, crushes all encoding benchmarks, and only $150. Plenty of good used card options from a few generations back like some mid-tier gpus, but pretty future-proof as far as server performance if you have kernel 6.3+
Edit for anyone later: ARC sucks ass right now for gaming on linux as intel devs are 90% windows focused. Don’t take this advice for a desktop GPU
Intel arc a380 would be a good option, especially if you’re interested in av1 encoding. I know asrock recently showed off a low profile a380, don’t know if it’s available yet tho
Nvidia Tesla P4. Under $100 for a new one on eBay. Comes with a low profile bracket.
If you’re running Proxmox, you can even get the official vGPU drivers running so you can split the card between multiple VMs.
@TrenchcoatFullofBats I think this is the winning answer. Looks like it’s about a 1060 6GB, which should be enough horsepower for several desktop VMs, and keeps open my full profile slots should I ever want to install something even more powerful in the future. vGPU support is also nice so I don’t have to juggle which VM gets which GPU.
They also only pull 75w, which is an added bonus.
You may want to check out Craft Computing’s YT channel - he did a few episodes (Piped link) in his Cloud Gaming series on these cards.
Nvidia RTX 4090 ti.
Obviously a joke. I’d love to see some good suggestions here too ☺️
1030’s can be both low profile and passively cooled. They are cheap but their performance is quite low. I think it’s slower then modern integrated graphics. 1650’s are also available without external power.
On AMD’s side you can go for either a Radeon 460 or a Radeon Pro WX 5100. I think those 4 are your best options.
Edit: I think as someone else commented the RX 6400 might be the best option nowadays.
