This is what I use and it's great. Low power, cooler, quieter, and in the current economy, MUCH cheaper.

I've considered Proxmox, and know a few people who use it, but I think the added features, complexity, learning something new, might be too much for me right now. There's a lot going on in my life, in my family and in my country and my human operating system is struggling to free up resources. Long term though, this is the goal. I don't know if I have the drives lying around to build a new machine and migrate everything at the moment anyway. If I recall correctly, Proxmox doesn't use ZFS. Migrating truenas is theoretically as easy as backing up my config file and password seeds and reinstalling, it seems to just pick up the hardware on the next boot. I'm just not sure if I have options outside the typical gamer cards like RTX.

A bit, I would have to weigh the cost of a $100 GTX 1660 vs a $300 GTX 3060 (US, based on my local used prices). $100 might buy me a few years, $300 might buy me a few more years, but could also buy me a dud or a burnout card. I think I might give the weaker card a try and save the money so I can avoid a mortgage the next time I need to upgrade a laptop. :D

The NVIDIA 50-series Blackwell cards require the use of the new open GPU kernel module, but several of NVIDIA’s older generations of GPUs - including the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta generations - lack the GPU System Processor (GSP) module on their silicon in order to leverage the open kernel module, and thus will no longer function. This includes the GTX 700-series, 900-GTX series, GTX 10-series, the Quadro M-series and P-series, and Tesla M-series and P-series cards.

Here's the detail. Sounds like the support for the new cards messed up the old cards, but it sounds like they might be working on a comparability fix. I use open drivers on some other systems. I don't remember why I didn't consider that a option here. This server has lived many lives and it's mission continues to change and refocus all the time. Thanks for the reply.

Thanks for the suggestion. I looked into the P series cards a bit and here is what I found:

The NVIDIA 50-series Blackwell cards require the use of the new open GPU kernel module, but several of NVIDIA’s older generations of GPUs - including the Maxwell, Pascal, and Volta generations - lack the GPU System Processor (GSP) module on their silicon in order to leverage the open kernel module, and thus will no longer function. This includes the GTX 700-series, 900-GTX series, GTX 10-series, the Quadro M-series and P-series, and Tesla M-series and P-series cards.

Looks like the 16xx is the lowest cards supported by TrueNAS without extra work. There's a few used 1660s in my area for ~$100. I might give that a try. If it doesn't work out, I won't be despairing for weeks about a $100 card, and if it does work, I'll replace one of the 1080s with a 1660 for TrueNAS to use as an apps card and leave the other 1080 to pass through to the VM for Home Assistant. That said, I'm still open to options, so if anyone thinks I'm silly for considering this, tell me what you think.

The A2000 came up as an option a few times. It's more expensive and mildly more capable, though a commenter on that loser Spez's site said they had stability issues due to it being a workstation card. I'm not playing games, so I may not run into the same issues.

Here's info on what's up and the workaround if you still want to. You may have an easier time than me if you have more experience with this sort of thing.

https://forums.truenas.com/t/nvidia-compatible-driver-test-for-truenas-25-10-goldeye/53395