u/Obvious-Breakfast262

Man, I gotta say, I’m really bummed by the research I’ve uncovered the past week or so.

To make a long story short, I recently had the idea to make a “jack of all trades“ proxmox server, tasked with tackling all my home compute needs: 24/7 services like immich, jellyfin, and Tailscale, tinker with some local llms and ai, and of course, gaming. It was going to be a home server consolidating three machines into one lean, power-efficient beast—I was so pumped to build it and set it up.

However, after reading the countless posts about blocked vm gaming protocols by anti-cheat companies like EAC and BattleEye, its greatly diminished my desire to build my dream machine. I play multiple games that probably just wouldn‘t work in a vm, Elden Ring, Halo, Destiny, Arc Raiders.

I guess I’m just making this post to hear from others if there is any light at the end of the tunnel or something to hope for.

Planning a homelab consolidation build and want to get some feedback on a potential pain point. Trying to avoid running separate gaming/AI/server machines.

Hardware: i5-14400 (iGPU) + RTX 4070 Ti Super 16GB

Three tiers on one Proxmox host:

1. Windows 11 gaming VM — GPU passthrough (4070 Ti Super), only powered on when gaming, Apollo/Moonlight for remote play

2. Ubuntu AI/LLM VM — Ollama + local models, tinkering/learning only, not 24/7. Would use the same 4070 Ti Super as the gaming VM, but never simultaneously

3. Always-on LXCs — Immich, Jellyfin, Tailscale subnet router. Using the iGPU (via /dev/dri passthrough) for Jellyfin/Immich transcoding to keep this tier's power draw low

GPU handoff idea: Use Proxmox hookscripts to bind/unbind the dGPU between vfio-pci and the host Nvidia driver depending on which VM (if any) is running, so the card sits under the host driver at idle for better power states rather than orphaned under vfio-pci.

Anyone run into similar problems and have some advice to give me?

I’m brainstorming a single-system Proxmox home lab build. My goal is to consolidate 3 use cases into one machine:

Windows 11 gaming VM:

• GPU passthrough
• Used for gaming only when needed
• VM would be shut down when not gaming
• Apollo + moonlight remote access

Ubuntu Linux AI / local LLM VM:

• Ollama, Odysseus, local models, experimentation
• Does NOT need to run 24/7 and doesn’t need to be super powerful. This is just a playground for tinkering and learning.
• Would use the same GPU as the gaming VM, but never at the same time
• Idea is: host server doesn’t use the gpu but keeps it idle to save power, then when entering either of the vm’s, it gets the gpu.

Lightweight always-on LXC containers:

• Immich
• Jellyfin
• Tailscale as a subnet router
• Use the iGPU from the CPU as the host system gpu, that way the system idle power draw is at a minimum
• Photos and media shared from home nas via smb to the proxmox server

I’m mainly trying to:

• save power
• save money
• avoid building separate gaming + AI + home server systems
• keep idle power low when only the lxc containers are running

Hardware:

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9700X 3.8 GHz 8-Core Processor 

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15S 82.5 CFM

Motherboard: MSi Pro X870E-P AM5 ATX AMD

Memory: 32GB 2x16GB DDR5 6000 CL36

Storage: 1 x 256 GB Boot NVMe, 1 x 1 TB M.2 Drive for Windows VM

Video Card: Zotac GAMING Trinity GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER 16 GB

Case: Corsair Frame 4000D Modular ATX Mid Tower

Power Supply: be quiet! Power Zone 2 750 W 80+ Platinum Certified Fully Modular ATX

Case Fans: 3 Fans, 2 Noctua NF-A20 PWM Intake, 1 Noctua NF-A14x25 G2 PWM Exhaust

Is something like this feasible from a software/operating system standpoint? Would I be able to get it to a ”set it and forget it“ position?

I’m brainstorming a single-system Proxmox home lab build and want to see if its even possible.

My goal is to consolidate 3 use cases into one machine:

1. Windows 11 gaming VM

• GPU passthrough
• Used for gaming only when needed
• VM would be shut down when not gaming

1. Linux AI / local LLM VM

• Ollama, Stable Diffusion, local models, experimentation
• Does NOT need to run 24/7
• Would use the same GPU as the gaming VM, but never at the same time
• Idea is: gaming VM off -> AI VM gets GPU, AI VM off -> GPU mostly idle

1. Lightweight always-on services VM/container

• Immich
• Jellyfin
• Tailscale
• NAS/media/photo storage
• No GPU usage needed

Current hardware:

• Ryzen 7 9700X
• RTX 5060 Ti 16GB
• 64GB RAM

Main questions:

• Is dynamic “one GPU shared between two VMs but never simultaneously” practical in Proxmox?
• How reliable is modern NVIDIA GPU passthrough switching between VMs?
• Am I likely to hit GPU reset issues requiring host reboots?
• Is my current hardware already good enough for this architecture?

I’m mainly trying to:

• save power
• save money
• avoid building separate gaming + AI + NAS systems
• keep idle power low when only the services VM is running

Would appreciate hearing from people actually running similar setups.