You may have seen my post trying to troubleshoot my server. It seems either the motherboard or CPU is dead, so hey, why not do an upgrade?
I use this server for a lot. It’s used for a Jellyfin server, sometimes multiple streams at once. I think I’d like hardware transcoding, I want it to be really good at streaming Jellyfin, and preferably multiple streams at once without issue.
It’s also going to be used for hosting Zusam, a kind of private forum for friends/family - a key thing is that this will also be transcoding videos and photos to downscale them (uses FFmpeg).
I also host Photoprism, which will be generating thumbnails and indexing photos.
In addition to this, I also host a bunch of other stuff, I think the key ones are Nextcloud AIO and PaperlessNGX (which does OCR) as these would be more demanding. Also the *arr stack. Then another 10 or so services that aren’t too demanding and have low usage so are unlikely to be an issue outside of making sure I have enough RAM.
I use it as a backup server as well. It receives borg backups from other devices and backs up itself to a backup HDD, and does cloud backups, but has a fast LAN connection and decent internet speed (300Mbps) and this is scheduled overnight so probably doesn’t affect anything.
I also use it for playing games with the kids! Normally Stardew Valley but sometimes more demanding games.
Many of the hosted services have family members also using them. I want to make sure I can do things like the Photoprism indexing and Zusam video downscaling while not affecting the experience using Jellyfin or other services. It’s all good if this happens by limiting cores for transcoding. It would be nice to be able to use it for more demanding gaming as well, but I understand if it’s a bit hard to keep everything going nicely with a demanding game running that doesn’t limit its multithreading.
Possibly related for compatibility purposes:
- all my hard drives are 3.5" HDD or 2.5" SSD SATA connections. I have 2 SSDs and 2 HDDs.
- I also have a Radeon rx5700xt graphics card. Would be nice to be able to keep using this.
- I’m currently running a full desktop environment (Linux Mint - Cinnamon) on it, for the purposes of playing the games. So needs to work well with Linux and also play nicely with wireless Xbone controllers.
- Case is Mid sized. Specifically this one.
And the current CPU is an AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, in case you want to tell me what I have is fine and I don’t need an upgrade 🥲
What are some good options for an upgrade?
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Just wanna shout out that Intel are supposed to have fixed their troubles with 13th and 14th gen cpus, I know Dell went out with a customer advisory in October to update the BIOS to fix said trouble.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/4/24262287/intel-13th-14th-gen-crash-raptor-lake-root-cause-fixAnd Intel CPUs are great when it comes to transcoding just like the AMD X3D CPUs are king when it comes to gaming.
in case you want to tell me what I have is fine and I don’t need an upgrade
What you have is fine and you don’t need an upgrade 😁
But we’re not looking for fine, are we? :)
I would keep the gpu and get as many cpu cores and ram as my budget allows. Once you cross into “stupid amount of RAM” territory you can start utilising tmpfs for transient things such as jellyfin transcode directory to:
- preserve those precious ssd writes (not really relevant anymore)
- make it more efficient (feels-good kind of relevant)
- running a filesystem in ram is really cool (most relevant, naturally :D)
Does intel/AMD matter? I have heard intel has special hardware for transcoding (Quick sync) - does this mean I should go for an intel CPU or is there an AMD equivalent? And am I prioritising number of cores over core speed?
How much RAM is enough (at what point do I prioritise spending on CPU over the RAM). I currently have 16GB but was thinking maybe 64GB? You say SSD writes aren’t that relevant anymore but I have killed a few SSDs in my time so I think it’s still relevant!
Edit: Maybe a CPU like this? https://nz.pcpartpicker.com/product/xNXV3C/intel-core-ultra-5-245k-42-ghz-14-core-processor-bx80768245k
That is a recent CPU that has 14 cores and the most recent version of quick sync. It’s been a long time since I had intel, or even since I last did a build, so a bit out of the loop on what I should be looking for.
Don’t mind the $NZD, looks worse than it is (though the exchange rate is a killer at the moment)
I wouldn’t really trust Intel CPUs after the degradation issues they were having. It will take a while to prove that it’s been fixed.
Aw man. So I want quick sync for better hardware transcoding but of course that doesn’t matter if the chip is melting so probably go for a recent AMD CPU instead even though it doesn’t have quick sync it should have hardware transcoding capabilities almost as good. OK, I’ll start looking at AMD again.
I mean if you’re keeping the GPU - you can just set jellyfin to use VAAPI and utilise the gpu that way.
Oh I didn’t realise I could do that! You first link seems to say there is quite limited codec support though?
New (7000 and 9000) ryzen CPUs have an iGPU that can transcode via AMF, so the ‘equivalent’ would just be buy a modern AMD CPU.
AMF isn’t quite as good as Quicksync, but it’s probably fine for most use cases for most people, though I can notice the image quality losses when you’re doing something like transcoding to 1080p low(ish) bitrate for remote streaming, and so have a very big bias in favor of nvenc or quicksync.
Also, I’m in the more-ram-is-better camp, so buy as much as you want and/or the platform supports.
Looking at the intel CPU I linked above, that whole series doesn’t come with a cooler. I’ve never done a build that didn’t come with a CPU/cooler bundle. How do I know which cooler will provide enough cooling for that chip? Not what is compatible, but what will actually be enough to stop it thermal throttling?
The thermalright peerless assassin would be my first choice. Cheap, good, and works on either amd or intel chips. I’ve got two with no complaints.
Ah that does look like good bang for buck! Thanks!
NH-D15 is default for me. Incredible performance, whisper-quiet. And if you need new brackets for an upgrade, the company will supply them free of charge!
Thermalright or Noctua. Can’t really go wrong.
Ive heard the intel gpus are very good at transcoding and are reletivly cheap compared to other manufacturers.
Is that onboard graphics or does intel do dedicated graphics cards?
They do dedicated graphics cards (arc) but depending on ur workload u might not need sonthing that powerfull. Btw dont take my word for it do ur own research and consult with dr gpt.
Yeah seems a bit overkill, I would think the integrated quick sync would be more along the lines of what I need.
I just received a Beelink brand mini PC with an N100 intel CPU with QuickSync.
After setting up PleX and updating the drivers, I was able to hardware transcode the same 4K HDR movie to two separate devices simultaneously (with subtitles and HDR -> SDR tone mapping). Based on headroom it seemed like I might be able to do another. Others say it can do like up to 8 transcodes of varying source quality.
Oh wow that’s awesome. Shame that someone told me about all the issues with recent intel CPUs. I’ll probably go AMD again.
