Reddit mentions of ZOTAC GeForce GT 710 1GB DDR3 PCIE x 1 , DVI, HDMI, VGA, Low Profile Graphic Card (ZT-71304-20L)

• Ryzen 5 1600 + Gigabyte B450-DS3H $120 at Microcenter
  
• 32GB (2x16GB) RAM ~$130
  
• Cache: 256GB NVMe drive ~$45
  
• Capacity: 1TB SSD w/DRAM ~$110
  
• used Broadcom 57810 10gb NIC ~$25
  
• USB stick for ESXi ~$8
  
• PCIe x1 video card ~$40 (you only need 1 for initial config because that mobo will boot ESXi headless)
  
• 80+ Bronze PSU ~$45
  
• optional dirt cheap case ~$20
  
• 10gb DAC cable ~$15
  
• 4 port 10gb switch ~$145
  
  Estimated Total $1736 +tax and shipping
  
  There're a few areas you could scrimp to get to $1500. This is basically my build, but I went with 4 nodes, a bigger switch, and a cheap 4 pack of longer cables (10gtek's 4 packs have a decent discount). If the price of the Intel 660p has your attention for multiple capacity drives, I suggest an x470 or x570 mobo that can do x4x4x4x4 bifurcation on the x16 slot and then use a quad m.2 board without a PCIe switch for them (ones from ASUS and ASrock are ~$100 which can negate any cost savings). There are boards with a PCIe switch that will work with the above board, but they're very expensive.
  
  If you get a MikroTik switch, use RouterOS because SwOS apparently has bugs beyond what I experienced. If you get one of their PoE switches, be careful with non-PoE devices. Mine was working fine, but I triggered a bug in SwOS and it toasted some gear; I need to have a conversation with MikroTik and the seller to see what can be done about what got toasted.

There are also pcie x1 low profile single slot video cards with "recent" gpu chipsets if that is an option. Come with both brackets, have used to put local video on some older retired servers, use the x8 and x16 for HBAs and NICs instead.

https://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-GeForce-Profile-Graphic-ZT-71304-20L/dp/B01E9Z2D60

ZOTAC GeForce GT 710 1GB DDR3 PCIE x 1 , DVI, HDMI, VGA, Low Profile Graphic Card (ZT-71304-20L) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E9Z2D60/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apap_CVa3TbiVV2Nh1

That SATA card is a PCIe x2 card. With that graphics card, your motherboard only has PCIe x1 slots remaining. You'll note that on x1 cards the second tab is shorter than the first.

Unfortunately x1 is fairly low bandwidth and I haven't yet found a card that is x1, has four slots, and supports hardware RAID.

As an alternative, Zotac makes a low-profile x1 version of the GT710. It will be largely incapable of gaming but will drive monitors for watching videos just fine. With that in a x1 slot you can put your SATA card in the x16 slot and be good to go.

Okay thanks!
Ordered this one from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01E9Z2D60

We'll know if it works in 2 weeks time :)

I bought one of these to be my "boot" card (have a Titan X for my Windows VM and no on-board graphics). Cheap, low profile, and available in an x1 version so you don't have to waste a bigger slot if you happen to have an unused x1 slot:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01E9Z2D60

Also, a note about the SSD. UnRAID boots off a USB stick and runs completely out of RAM after that. Your SSD can be used as a write cache and for your VMs though. There's a "mover" process that runs on a schedule you specified to copy things over to the spindles. The SSD is typically not going to be part of the array, and can't if you're using it as a write cache, and thus has no redundancy. You can add a second SSD for RAID-1 (mirrored) redundancy.

If you're planning to have any redundancy for the array, you'll need at least one extra drive for parity and it'll have to be as big or bigger than the other drives. You can have up to two parity drives.

Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions.

Just to give you an idea, I grabbed one of these single slot 710’s.

It actually struggles a bit with 3 1080p displays running Netflix and a bunch of tabs, so a 730 might have been better.

Keep in mind this card is about the same as the newer 1030 you might see - they don’t change the architecture of the low end cards much.

this one https://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-GeForce-Profile-Graphic-ZT-71304-20L/dp/B01E9Z2D60

https://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-GeForce-Profile-Graphic-ZT-71304-20L/dp/B01E9Z2D60/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=video+card&qid=1570047162&refinements=p_n_feature_four_browse-bin%3A3542896011&rnid=2057431011&s=pc&sr=1-3

What do you think of this? I admit I'm not very hardware knowledgeable, I work in IT but in a purely virtual environment

https://www.amazon.ca/ZOTAC-GeForce-Profile-Graphic-ZT-7130 4-20L/dp/B01E9Z2D60/

GT 710's seem to be the cheapest thing I can find that have HDMI. They even have a nice bonus of still actually being supported in NV's latest drivers.

I used to use an HD 5450 for this kind of thing, but support for that card is long since dead and prices aren't any better than the GT 710. I don't think AMD makes anything newer that's cheaper, they haven't really made super low end cards video adapter level GPU's for a few generations now. All their super cheap bottom of the barrel GPU's look to be mobile only in cheap laptops.

i use 2 of these for different VM's and they pass through my x1 slots great:

https://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-GeForce-Profile-Graphic-ZT-71304-20L/dp/B01E9Z2D60?ref_=ast_sto_dp