New to Proxmox- My daughter would like to use Steam, so I am trying to figure out the best way to use Steam Via Proxmox

[WallyV]

I recently installed Proxmox VE on my HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen9 server Dual Intel Xeon E5-2687W CPUs -10 Cores/20 Threads x2=20 cores/40 threads, 2 -800Watt PSUs, & 448 Gigs of Ram.
I have created 2- Debian12 VMs- 32 Gigs of RAM each (though I broke one VM by pushing snapshot and stopping it LOL, so I will figure out a way to delete that VM)
I installed 4 LXC containers-Ubuntu 2204, Alpine 319, RockyLinux9, & SABnzbd LXC. I haven't configured much yet.
I don't do any gaming, so the best graphics card I have is an GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB Ram. I just put that into my server, but I don't have it configured yet.
What are your suggestions to use Proxmox VE server to stream Steam?
I use Debian Linux not MS Windows, so I have experience with Linux but new to containers and haven't figured out passthru stuff.
Thanks

P.S.- She has an 8 gig Raspberry pi4 in her room that I could turn back on and a $100 Very low-end student laptop to access the local network in a web browser. I don't think either of those systems are powerful enough to run Steam.

 

[Dunuin]

Xeon E5-2687W CPUs

Not great for gaming.

GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB Ram

Not great either.
But depends on the games. For newer tripple A titles playing with 720p and low settings might be fine.

though I broke one VM by pushing snapshot and stopping it LOL, so I will figure out a way to delete that VM

That shouldn't break it.

I don't do any gaming, so the best graphics card I have is an GeForce GTX 1050 Ti with 4GB Ram. I just put that into my server, but I don't have it configured yet.
What are your suggestions to use Proxmox VE server to stream Steam?
I use Debian Linux not MS Windows, so I have experience with Linux but new to containers and haven't figured out passthru stuff.
Thanks

Amount of games that support Linux is still limited (but getting better thanks to the steamdeck). I personally would use a Windows VM for it and then PCI passthrough the GPU (in case you don'T need that GPU for anything else): https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI_Passthrough
For the actual game-streaming the "Steam Remote Play" might be an option in case your daughter's computer runs steam and got a dedicated GPU or iGPU for decoding of the video stream. Oherwise I think "parsec" allows for best latency/graphics when it comes to remoting into a full desktop environment but then the client probably also should be able have HW accelerated video decoding for the h.264 or h.265 video streams or otherwise the clients CPU will have to do all that in software and might not be great.
In case she wants to play multiplayer games this might become quite hard because those will often run anti-cheat-software and will prevent her from gaming as they think VMs are bad and only for cheaters so you might have to obfuscate a lot to cheat the anti-cheat-software in not thinking that you are running the games on a VM (and this might cause stability and performance problems).

In short: Not an easy/great experience and I would always prefer a bare metal gaming PC if available.

 

[WallyV]

Not great for gaming.

Not great either.
But depends on the games. For newer tripple A titles playing with 720p and low settings might be fine.


That shouldn't break it.


Amount of games that support Linux is still limited (but getting better thanks to the steamdeck). I personally would use a Windows VM for it and then PCI passthrough the GPU (in case you don'T need that GPU for anything else): https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/PCI_Passthrough
For the actual game-streaming the "Steam Remote Play" might be an option in case your daughter's computer runs steam and got a dedicated GPU or iGPU for decoding of the video stream. Oherwise I think "parsec" allows for best latency/graphics when it comes to remoting into a full desktop environment but then the client probably also should be able have HW accelerated video decoding for the h.264 or h.265 video streams or otherwise the clients CPU will have to do all that in software and might not be great.
In case she wants to play multiplayer games this might become quite hard because those will often run anti-cheat-software and will prevent her from gaming as they think VMs are bad and only for cheaters so you might have to obfuscate a lot to cheat the anti-cheat-software in not thinking that you are running the games on a VM (and this might cause stability and performance problems).

In short: Not an easy/great experience and I would always prefer a bare metal gaming PC if available.

Thank you very much. I appreciate your feedback. I am now looking at the various options. None of us in the household have Desktop PCs. We have old or underpowered laptops, Raspberry Pi 4s, & 2 Nvidia Shields. My current TrueNas Scale "Server" is in a large Tower, but I am going to use Proxmox VE instead of TrueNas Scale on the ProLiant Server so that tower will be available as a Desktop PC. Maybe the i7-9700F processor, 48 Gb RAM, & the GeForce GTX 1050 Ti 4Gb Ram could work for lower end gaming.

 

[Dunuin]

Problem with old laptops is that remoting into a VM still needs lots of network bandwidth and a semi-modern (i)GPU because of the video decoding. My 11 years old laptop for example even struggles to playback youtube videos as the iGPU is too old to support HW decoding of the VP9 codec that Youtube is streaming with, so this is done in software by the CPU, consuming 20W more and bringing all CPU cores to ~70% utilisation. So the laptop doesn't need to be powerful but it shouldn't be too old.

 

[WallyV]

Problem with old laptops is that remoting into a VM still needs lots of network bandwidth and a semi-modern (i)GPU because of the video decoding. My 11 years old laptop for example even struggles to playback youtube videos as the iGPU is too old to support HW decoding of the VP9 codec that Youtube is streaming with, so this is done in software by the CPU, consuming 20W more and bringing all CPU cores to ~70% utilisation. So the laptop doesn't need to be powerful but it shouldn't be too old.

Thanks! My laptop is an HP ENVY x360 intel core 5- 16Gb Ram, the other laptops are less than 2 years old but very cheap student laptops from Microcenter. I do have Raspberry Pi4s with 8Gb of RAM that I have used as mini desktops.
I do appreciate the information that you gave me. I will pay more attention to iGPU stuff.
Thanks