Advice: R7 5800U or Intel N100 for low power virtualization server + advice on software stack

[ScarZero]

Hi there !

Long time reader, first time poster here. I am planning on buying a tiny PC for virtualization purposes, mainly docker containers, and maybe a few VM's.

I can get a R7 5800U box ( T-Bao MN58U ) with 32GB RAM +1TB NVMe, 1Gig Ethernet + 2.5G Ethernet for around 390€.
Or Intel N100 ( T-Bao T8 Plus ) with 16GB RAM (soldered) + 512 SSD ( not specified if SATA or NVMe ) with dual 1Gig Ethernet for 180€

Some of the services I will be running are : Home Assistant, Pi-Hole, Plex Media Server, a VPN server ( either OpenVPN or Tailscale ) and a few other lightweight services.
My idea was to install Debian bare metal, with Proxmox VE and Portainer on top of it for managing my VM's and containers. I will also probably install Plex Media Server bare metal for better transcoding performance.

My main goal being power efficiency, which one would be better ? I have seen on YT that the idle power consumption is pretty much the same between those 2 processors, and nearly the same at full tilt, but not in these exact machines. Maybe if anyone has one of them, they could tell us how power optimized they are, and how much we can tweak them at the BIOS level for power efficiency.

I would directly go for the Ryzen based machine, because of the compute power advantage, but I am wondering if the intel one would be sufficient for my use case and save me 200€ in the process.

For the software stack, am I on the right path or would I be better off with a bare metal PVE install, with VM's dedicated for the Plex server and docker ? In the past I had both a real 19" server for my VM's and a lightweight computer for my dockers.
Side note : The Plex server will only serve as a transcode server for 2 devices, occasionally a third one, with the actual media stored on my NAS

 

[Tech Junky]

transcoding

You're either going to want Intel or a proper GPU. As for the GPU I recently rebuilt to AMD and added an A380 for $100 to speed up Plex / handbrake conversions. Amazing performance compared to the AMD CPU processing time. With the 380 it takes about 1/8th the time to run files through HB. I run Ubuntu but Deb should be the same.

Another thing to keep in mind is the # of cores will make the world of difference in how many VMs you can run and the fluidity of them while running.

VPN - wireguard will give better performance compared to OVPN. WG will hit wire speed where even with the best setup OVPN gets stuck at a max of 500-600mbps where WG happily cruises beyond 1gbps.

Overall the prices aren't bad on the boxes you mentioned but, I think you'll be disappointed with the performance as designed. Might be better off either building or ebay secondhand with better specs.

 

[newabc]

The OP can find the ones with an Intel nic which is more stable and fully utilizes its bandwidth.
Some Realtek NICs are not able to do so when you need such a feature after running 24x7 for a long time period.

 

[ScarZero]

You're either going to want Intel or a proper GPU. As for the GPU I recently rebuilt to AMD and added an A380 for $100 to speed up Plex / handbrake conversions. Amazing performance compared to the AMD CPU processing time. With the 380 it takes about 1/8th the time to run files through HB.

To be honest, I didn't look at the integrated Radeon's transcoding performance, is it that bad ?

I don't plan on running a massive amount of VM's, 4 cores should be sufficient.

For the VPN I had totally forgotten about WG, I'll run that I think.

As for the size/building my own, I don't think I could get something that sips as little power as those if I build my own, and I don't have the space where I want it to be to get a much bigger box. a Cooler Master Elite 130 is too big for the spot I intend it to sit, even a Elite 110 is a really tight fit. But the second hand eBay lead might be where I will find the perfect fit.

I've found another unit from GMK ( who seems to use a lot intel NUC boards, thus intel NIC's as well ) but it has a 11390h, which is far less power efficient. Might still be my better option out of the bunch.

 

[Tech Junky]

transcoding

I just did a 7900X and to convert files the fps was crap and took much longer than I thought it would. Under 100fps for any file I tried to send through handbrake. The A380 though I've seen hit over 1000 fps when converting files. It still ramps up the CPU but much quicker completion then vs extended load on the CPU drawing higher power while engaged.

4 cores

Each VM will want more and the system will reserve 2 for itself leaving only 2 for use. It'll work but it won't be quick in response time when trying to do things.

size/building

I look at it this way. It can be small or pretty but not both unless you get creative and up the budget. One way around it is to go compact and stack a das for the drives on top or off to the side. Or uee enclosure for M2 drives that's small and compact. The trade off will be speed even if you went with thunderbolt the max speed would be 3.1GB/s. If you went spinners the highest das only hits 420MB/s.

far less power

Again this will impact the speed of things. If you don't mind waiting for things to process it's not an issue but, if it needs to be responsive it will throttle with smaller options. There are things like putting an AMD in eco mode that drop the use to 65w and only shave 3-5% off the performance.

 

[ScarZero]

I just did a 7900X and to convert files the fps was crap and took much longer than I thought it would. Under 100fps for any file I tried to send through handbrake. The A380 though I've seen hit over 1000 fps when converting files. It still ramps up the CPU but much quicker completion then vs extended load on the CPU drawing higher power while engaged.

I've seen on other forums ( notably PlexMediaServer's one ) that other people are capable of achieving easily 3+ concurrent transcodes on Ryzen 5500U, as the PMS devs have added and improved HW transcode for those chips in the last month or so. It seems a bit weird to me that yon can only achieve 100fps with your 7900X...

Each VM will want more and the system will reserve 2 for itself leaving only 2 for use. It'll work but it won't be quick in response time when trying to do things.

Again this will impact the speed of things. If you don't mind waiting for things to process it's not an issue but, if it needs to be responsive it will throttle with smaller options. There are things like putting an AMD in eco mode that drop the use to 65w and only shave 3-5% off the performance.

Well, putting the performance back into context, coming from a 4th gen i3, my current box is a bit limited from time to time, but I don't mind waiting half a second for anything to happen, I'm not looking for the ultimate performance at any time, just something powerful enough to be able to cruise along while running all the services I listed in my first post, and doing that with minimum power consumtion. I feel like your focus is more on raw performance at any time, while my focus is on power efficiency. I don't know if you have used the new 12th gen N series of CPU's, but I did for a few days, and it was quite a surprise to me how power efficient they are. If power consumption was not a problem for me, I'd just get one of my X99 boards and Xeon out of storage and run with those.

I look at it this way. It can be small or pretty but not both unless you get creative and up the budget. One way around it is to go compact and stack a das for the drives on top or off to the side. Or uee enclosure for M2 drives that's small and compact. The trade off will be speed even if you went with thunderbolt the max speed would be 3.1GB/s. If you went spinners the highest das only hits 420MB/s.

I don't plan on having any storage for this box apart from the OS SSD, I just referenced to the Elite 110 because this size of chassis is common for ITX based systems, and it is cheap.

 

[Tech Junky]

Most of the time the box is idle and just doing routing and streaming converted files which will do direct play without needing to transcode. So, going for performance up front and idle for most of the time makes the power draw considerably less for the majority of the time. The two biggest consumers are the GPUs i and d both being about 50w/ea. I woulda say the idle consumption is maybe 100-150w but to get a true reading would need a power measure device to put inline. The max power though is still reasonable. I'll throw things into PCP and get a total.

 

[Tech Junky]

So, looking at this as a ballpark figure the min during idle would be under 100 with a max ~350 under 100% load. The tradeoff being more efficient during most of the day when just moving packets around and quicker media conversions when needed.

Of course this isn't including the system fans or the U3 drive but, reducing the time the CPU is pegged at a higher clock during a media conversion means more savings on playback not to mention the space saved on the drive for TS vs MKV or MP4 formats.

1/8th the time to convert
1/5th the size of the original file

The little things add up over time. If you converted the files that trigger the transcoding then it's a one and done and not a spike later on when you trigger the need by using a phone to playback. The idea behind the A380 is using QSV to convert the files is more efficient than using an AMD / NVIDIA GPU to do it at a slower speed and 3X the cost for the cards. For Video all levels of the ARC cards perform the same so, there's no sense in wasting another $200+ on the 770 / 16GB model for the same performance. Also, not using the box for gaming so... yeah.

Having been fighting the fight for several years though and trying different methods of HW to get the ideal results spend a little more now to save a lot more later. I've done the NUC thing and different builds and played with VMs and containers. I have 3 systems sitting here in parts and 2 active setups... needless to say it's time to sell off the idle parts sitting around.

Just trying to let you know what to realistically expect before you spend the money on it.

 

[billybobkent]

I have the Beelink N100 w/ Dual 2.5Gbe and it's a fantastic machine for under $200 and ~10W. You shouldn't have problems with any of that until you said Plex. Depending on how many concurrent users and if you are streaming original or you are transcoding will depend if you need something stronger specially with a better GPU. I'm looking for something faster than the N100, not because it doesn't work well, but I want to setup a cluster and rather just spend more for some more speed.

 

[ScarZero]

I have the Beelink N100 w/ Dual 2.5Gbe and it's a fantastic machine for under $200 and ~10W. You shouldn't have problems with any of that until you said Plex. Depending on how many concurrent users and if you are streaming original or you are transcoding will depend if you need something stronger specially with a better GPU. I'm looking for something faster than the N100, not because it doesn't work well, but I want to setup a cluster and rather just spend more for some more speed.

Thanks for your feedback. For Plex, There will be at max 2 concurrent streams, and most of my content is 1080p H264, so unless I'm not local, it would be direct stream to my TV, I might scale down to 720p when I'm not at home. Have you tried Plex with your machine ? if so, where was the limit ?

 

[billybobkent]

I don’t use transcoding so it isn’t an issue.