Upgrading my home server

[kevindd992002]

I have a fairly low-power home server with these specs:

ASRock J5005-ITX
2x4GB SODIMM RAM
1 x 2.5" Samsung 850 EVO SSD system disk
2 x 3.5" 8TB WD White HDD
1 x 3.5" 3TB WD Red HDD
HDPlex 200W NanoATX PSU
Fractal Design Node 304

I have Debian 11 on it. I use MergerFs plus Snapraid for the NAS function. I also have it running Plex Media Server (native Linux install) and a couple of docker containers for (pihole, arrs, download clients, etc.). The CPU is having a hard time transcoding HEVC10 and I feel that it's time for an upgrade anyways. For the upgrade, this is what I'm thinking:

* Keep the case, PSU, and SSD/HDD's (still not sure if it makes sense to upgrade to an nVME drive)
* Intel Pentium Gold G6400 10th Gen
* ASRock 410M/510M/470M/570M-itx/ac (depending on the availability here and what is cheapest)
* I would probably need to switch to using regular DDR4 RAM modules too. What is the recommended size that I get? Is it wise to stay at 8GB (2x4GB)? And would it be OK if I just get those Value RAM's without heatsinks?
* Since the motherboard only has 4 SATA3 ports, I would need to use an HBA card. Should I go with an LSI SAS2308 or SAS3008? I feel that the 2308 would be plenty for my use case. I've never used an HBA card but I know that you would need to flash an IT firmware. Which between HP, Dell, and IBM is the cheapest?

Any other suggestions you can think of? Thanks for the help!

 

[kevindd992002]

Mods, not sure if I posted in the right forum subsection. If not, please move it to General Chat since it covers all hardware.

 

[WANg]

I have a fairly low-power home server with these specs:

ASRock J5005-ITX
2x4GB SODIMM RAM
1 x 2.5" Samsung 850 EVO SSD system disk
2 x 3.5" 8TB WD White HDD
1 x 3.5" 3TB WD Red HDD
HDPlex 200W NanoATX PSU
Fractal Design Node 304

I have Debian 11 on it. I use MergerFs plus Snapraid for the NAS function. I also have it running Plex Media Server (native Linux install) and a couple of docker containers for (pihole, arrs, download clients, etc.). The CPU is having a hard time transcoding HEVC10 and I feel that it's time for an upgrade anyways. For the upgrade, this is what I'm thinking:

* Keep the case, PSU, and SSD/HDD's (still not sure if it makes sense to upgrade to an nVME drive)
* Intel Pentium Gold G6400 10th Gen
* ASRock 410M/510M/470M/570M-itx/ac (depending on the availability here and what is cheapest)
* I would probably need to switch to using regular DDR4 RAM modules too. What is the recommended size that I get? Is it wise to stay at 8GB (2x4GB)? And would it be OK if I just get those Value RAM's without heatsinks?
* Since the motherboard only has 4 SATA3 ports, I would need to use an HBA card. Should I go with an LSI SAS2308 or SAS3008? I feel that the 2308 would be plenty for my use case. I've never used an HBA card but I know that you would need to flash an IT firmware. Which between HP, Dell, and IBM is the cheapest?

Any other suggestions you can think of? Thanks for the help!

Eh, you might not need a new server quite yet.

a) Are you using Intel Quicksync within Debian 11? Just remember that the UHD605 in the J5005 and the UHD610 in the G6400 are both Intel Gen 9.5 ('Lake refresh) GPUs, and they are roughly similar in capabilities - both should do HEVC10 transcoding but limited to 2k (if I remember correctly) on a GT1 configuration.

You'll need this package to enable quicksync encoding (might need to enable the non-free repo) - the Intel drivers by default only accelerate decoding.

Debian -- Package Search Results -- intel-media-va-driver-non-free

I also doubt that the G6400 is so much stronger versus the J5005 to give up on the good idle power consumption figures (4x the TDP?!) - I would go with the i3-10100T if you want the 10th gen (Comet Lake) design and better perf. it is a 35w 4 core/8 thread part, though.
Another option to consider might be one of the lighter Ryzen/Athlon APUs with the AMD non-free drivers, which would enable VCE transcode for HEVC10 up to 4k.

b) You already have 4 SATA ports - unless you are planning to add more disks, or unless your future board only come with less than 4 SATA ports, you should not need an HBA card. You only have a single boot SATA SSD and 3 additional spinners.
In fact, your future motherboard might have M.2 SATA or M.2 NVMe slots in addition to the 4 SATA ports, so don't sweat it unless you need it. The 2308/3008 are RAID cards, though. Good to have, but not essential. Just remember that battery on RAID cards needs to be replaced, too.

c) Eh, always get as much RAM as you can afford. The Gemini Lakes can do up to 32GB of RAM in dual 16GB DIMM/SODIMMs, and any Intel Lakes can do up to 64GB of RAM in a pair of 32GB DIMM/SODIMMs. And yes, that 32GB limit has been well tested by the guys who run Dell/Wyse 5070 thin clients (same hardware but in a smaller package). And no, unless the chassis has terrible airflow, you don't need heatsinks. I almost never buy RAM with heatsink inside

 

[kevindd992002]

Eh, you might not need a new server quite yet.

a) Are you using Intel Quicksync within Debian 11? Just remember that the J5005 and the G6400 are both Intel Gen 9.5 ('Lake refresh) GPUs, and they are roughly similar in capabilities - both should do HEVC10 transcoding but limited to 2k (if I remember correctly) on a GT1 configuration.

You'll need this package to enable quicksync encoding (might need to enable the non-free repo) - the Intel drivers by default only accelerate decoding.

Debian -- Package Search Results -- intel-media-va-driver-non-free

I also doubt that the G6400 is so much stronger versus the J5005 to give up on the good idle power consumption figures (4x the TDP?!) - I would go with the i3-10100T if you want the 10th gen (Comet Lake) design and better perf. it is a 35w 4 core/8 thread part, though.
Another option to consider might be one of the lighter Ryzen/Athlon APUs with the AMD non-free drivers, which would enable VCE transcode for HEVC10 up to 4k.

b) You already have 4 SATA ports - unless you are planning to add more disks, or unless your future board only come with less than 4 SATA ports, you should not need an HBA card. You only have a single boot SATA SSD and 3 additional spinners.
In fact, your future motherboard might have M.2 SATA or M.2 NVMe slots in addition to the 4 SATA ports, so don't sweat it unless you need it. The 2308/3008 are RAID cards, though. Good to have, but not essential. Just remember that battery on RAID cards needs to be replaced, too.

c) Eh, always get as much RAM as you can afford. The Gemini Lakes can do up to 32GB of RAM in dual 16GB DIMM/SODIMMs, and any Intel Lakes can do up to 64GB of RAM in a pair of 32GB DIMM/SODIMMs. And yes, that 32GB limit has been well tested by the guys who run Dell/Wyse 5070 thin clients (same hardware but in a smaller package). And no, unless the chassis has terrible airflow, you don't need heatsinks. I almost never buy RAM with heatsink inside

I thought you'd say that. Let me answer your questions.

a) Yes, I do have Quicksync hw transcoding enabled in Debian 11/Plex. It works well until ASS subs (which are the best subs for Anime) are needed to be burned on-the-fly/transcoded in Anime releases. If the release is HEVC10, it just won't play. The Plex support team also confirmed it's a CPU issue. If it's H.264, I have no issues. Subtitle burning uses sw transcoding, so purely single core power is needed. The G6400 beats the J5005 in that regard.

I'm also thinking about the i3-10100 but I don't have any final decisions yet. Is it a better upgrade from the J5005 compared to the G6400? The G6400'a price is very attractive. I thought AMD is generally not good for Linux?

b) Yes, I will add more disks and is the reason why I need an HBA card. In fact, I'm already bear filling up my storage array. I want to be able to utilize the number of disks capacity of the Node 304, which is 6 slots. So ideally, it would be 1 x m.2 nvme for boot/system drige and 6 x SATA HDD's. So I'm not sure if I need the 2008, 2308, or 3008. I know the 2008 is more than enough for 8 x SATA HDD's but I'm reading that the 2308 is still the better choice since some OS (like RHEL) does not support the older 2008 anymore and that if I plan to plug an SSD into the HBA card in the future, I would need at least a 2308. I don't think I need the 3008 as that's mainly for SAS3 drives.

c) Why would I need the most RAM I can afford? Is it because I never know when I need the extra RAM? Isn't it a per usage requirement as well? Are Kingston Value RAM modules any good?

 

[kevindd992002]

Also, where do you get the idle power consumption ratings of the CPU's? I'm only seeing max TDP in the Intel charts.

 

[WANg]

Also, where do you get the idle power consumption ratings of the CPU's? I'm only seeing max TDP in the Intel charts.

Experience and reading off a bunch of Ekecity Voltson smart outlets (with wattage read-outs) - I have Wyse 5070s, a few broadwell/Kaby machines, and at least 2 Ryzen embedded boxes in my home, and a couple of Dell Optiplex 5080 SFF boxes in my office - in general the G6400s idle at around 15-20w, while the J5005s idle at 7 or so.

 

[kevindd992002]

I see. Would it make sense to go full blast i3 11th gen or at least the i3-10100 over the i3-10100T?

 

[BlueFox]

For idle power consumption, the i3-10100 and i3-10100T are pretty much identical. The T model is just TDP limited and won't go over 35W under full load.

 

[WANg]

I thought you'd say that. Let me answer your questions.

a) Yes, I do have Quicksync hw transcoding enabled in Debian 11/Plex. It works well until ASS subs (which are the best subs for Anime) are needed to be burned on-the-fly/transcoded in Anime releases. If the release is HEVC10, it just won't play. The Plex support team also confirmed it's a CPU issue. If it's H.264, I have no issues. Subtitle burning uses sw transcoding, so purely single core power is needed. The G6400 beats the J5005 in that regard.

I'm also thinking about the i3-10100 but I don't have any final decisions yet. Is it a better upgrade from the J5005 compared to the G6400? The G6400'a price is very attractive. I thought AMD is generally not good for Linux?

b) Yes, I will add more disks and is the reason why I need an HBA card. In fact, I'm already bear filling up my storage array. I want to be able to utilize the number of disks capacity of the Node 304, which is 6 slots. So ideally, it would be 1 x m.2 nvme for boot/system drige and 6 x SATA HDD's. So I'm not sure if I need the 2008, 2308, or 3008. I know the 2008 is more than enough for 8 x SATA HDD's but I'm reading that the 2308 is still the better choice since some OS (like RHEL) does not support the older 2008 anymore and that if I plan to plug an SSD into the HBA card in the future, I would need at least a 2308. I don't think I need the 3008 as that's mainly for SAS3 drives.

c) Why would I need the most RAM I can afford? Is it because I never know when I need the extra RAM? Isn't it a per usage requirement as well? Are Kingston Value RAM modules any good?

If you hardcode/burn ASS/SRT into HEVC10 streams, the Gemini lakes will simply not be able to keep up. Quicksync does not have (AFAIK) a codepath that will allow it to composite text onto the display buffer and then run the transcode on top - it's a 2-pass - do the transcode to the destination codec, then composite with the subtitle text. I usually just embed subtitles and hope the timestamps are correct (but that's just me).
If you require software transcodes, then more fast cores are probably in the cards. Maybe a 6-core i5?

As for what to get - It depends on your budget and what you want the power consumption to be - I prefer to separate out my Plex/transcoding hardware from the NAS, since hardware is constantly getting cheaper (just look at the TinyMiniMicro thread here), and it's easier to swap a media center box and have it transcode network mounted files than to re-do my NAS (until it is absolutely necessary). The J5005 is actually not too different from the Intel C3000 (Denverton) server chips, so it has good bones and surprisingly well suited for personal NAS usage. Unless you absolutely have to, why replace it? Just subcontract out the heavy lifting and leave it as the NAS (that's what did with my nearly 10 year old HP MSG7-N40L). The LSI/Broadom 2308 will do just fine on that J5005. The old 2008s are probably a bit long in the tooth.

Up until recently my plex machine is a Sandy Bridge MacMIni (which is only used for streaming my iTunes collection on the fly), but it'll likely be replaced by either a Kaby Lake i3-7100U (Moderro IEC-4660) or a Ryzen R1505G powered HP t640 thin client, which will both idle at 4w, cost less than 100 USD, and do just fine with HEVC10 at 1080p30 or H264 (which is what I typically store my videos with). I can probably put the plex HTPC box into deep sleep when I am not using it, which saves me power or gives me the flexibility to do something else with it. Honestly, unless you are planning to transcode AV1 (which is so new even Tiger Lake Xe-LP only as a fixed function decode path) to HEVC, you're probably okay with something like a ~45w TDP Coffee lake i5 or first Gen Raven Ridge Ryzen APU with a Vega 8 for the next 2-3 years, even if you need to do some software encoding paths.

AMD is fine for Linux - the old Ryzen SMT kernel panics went away, and the cores run quite well. Where AMD falls down is on GPU driver quality (the VCN transcoding is only so-so even in Windows), and at that juncture it's really about whether you are okay with the higher overall core uaage while transcoding in exchange for faster and cheaper CPU cores.

As for the entire RAM angle - eh, I tend to use SODIMMs and DIMMs from Crucial (retail arm of Micron), G.Skill and etc - which doesn't have heatsinks, and I have yet to run into issues. Although the pricing between Kingston Value RAM (retail arm of Toshiba) Isn't that far from the mainstream vendors for me to prefer it. Plus considering that a pair of 16GB SODIMMs is only 100-120 from the likes of Amazon or Newegg and totally maxes out the machine for the price of coffee with coworkers for a week - what's the point not doing it?

When it came to RAM there is what I would call the economic sweet spot. For example, using a very simple search on Amazon for new DDR4 SODIMM from established vendors (and disregarding speed - the Gemini Lakes max out on DDR4-2133 if I remember correctly) - a pair of 4GB DDR4 is roughly 40 to 70 (between 5 to 8.75 USD per GB), a pair of 8GB is 60 to 80 (3.75 to 5 USD per GB), a pair of 16GB is 100 to 120 (3.13 USD to 3.75 USD), and a pair of 32GB is 225 to 300 (3.50 to 4.68 USD per GB). So basically, the "sweet spot" is at 16GB DDR4 modules. And considering that the price is trending downwards for the past 3 weeks...When you run something like TrueNAS Core the extra RAM is used for ARC cache to boost performance, and if you ever repurpose the J5005 to function as a hypervisor (which is something that the gemini lakes are decent for), the extra RAM does come in handy - so for small form factor machines I do heartily recommend throwing as much RAM as you can afford into it - you only have 2 slots and 2 channels anyways. If it's cheap, max it out and forget it.

 

[WANg]

For idle power consumption, the i3-10100 and i3-10100T are pretty much identical. The T model is just TDP limited and won't go over 35W under full load.

Probably different by 1-2 watts - the 10100T (35w) is 3GHz burstable to 3.8 and is designed for SFF/AIO machines with smaller heatsinks. - the 10300 (65w TDP?) starts at 3.7 and bursts up to 4.4. The 10300 might show the extra wattage simply for sitting at a higher base clock.

 

[kevindd992002]

If you hardcode/burn ASS/SRT into HEVC10 streams, the Gemini lakes will simply not be able to keep up. Quicksync does not have (AFAIK) a codepath that will allow it to composite text onto the display buffer and then run the transcode on top - it's a 2-pass - do the transcode to the destination codec, then composite with the subtitle text. I usually just embed subtitles and hope the timestamps are correct (but that's just me).
If you require software transcodes, then more fast cores are probably in the cards. Maybe a 6-core i5?

As for what to get - It depends on your budget and what you want the power consumption to be - I prefer to separate out my Plex/transcoding hardware from the NAS, since hardware is constantly getting cheaper (just look at the TinyMiniMicro thread here), and it's easier to swap a media center box and have it transcode network mounted files than to re-do my NAS (until it is absolutely necessary). The J5005 is actually not too different from the Intel C3000 (Denverton) server chips, so it has good bones and surprisingly well suited for personal NAS usage. Unless you absolutely have to, why replace it? Just subcontract out the heavy lifting and leave it as the NAS (that's what did with my nearly 10 year old HP MSG7-N40L). The LSI/Broadom 2308 will do just fine on that J5005. The old 2008s are probably a bit long in the tooth.

Up until recently my plex machine is a Sandy Bridge MacMIni (which is only used for streaming my iTunes collection on the fly), but it'll likely be replaced by either a Kaby Lake i3-7100U (Moderro IEC-4660) or a Ryzen R1505G powered HP t640 thin client, which will both idle at 4w, cost less than 100 USD, and do just fine with HEVC10 at 1080p30 or H264 (which is what I typically store my videos with). I can probably put the plex HTPC box into deep sleep when I am not using it, which saves me power or gives me the flexibility to do something else with it. Honestly, unless you are planning to transcode AV1 (which is so new even Tiger Lake Xe-LP only as a fixed function decode path) to HEVC, you're probably okay with something like a ~45w TDP Coffee lake i5 or first Gen Raven Ridge Ryzen APU with a Vega 8 for the next 2-3 years, even if you need to do some software encoding paths.

AMD is fine for Linux - the old Ryzen SMT kernel panics went away, and the cores run quite well. Where AMD falls down is on GPU driver quality (the VCN transcoding is only so-so even in Windows), and at that juncture it's really about whether you are okay with the higher overall core uaage while transcoding in exchange for faster and cheaper CPU cores.

As for the entire RAM angle - eh, I tend to use SODIMMs and DIMMs from Crucial (retail arm of Micron), G.Skill and etc - which doesn't have heatsinks, and I have yet to run into issues. Although the pricing between Kingston Value RAM (retail arm of Toshiba) Isn't that far from the mainstream vendors for me to prefer it. Plus considering that a pair of 16GB SODIMMs is only 100-120 from the likes of Amazon or Newegg and totally maxes out the machine for the price of coffee with coworkers for a week - what's the point not doing it?

When it came to RAM there is what I would call the economic sweet spot. For example, using a very simple search on Amazon for new DDR4 SODIMM from established vendors (and disregarding speed - the Gemini Lakes max out on DDR4-2133 if I remember correctly) - a pair of 4GB DDR4 is roughly 40 to 70 (between 5 to 8.75 USD per GB), a pair of 8GB is 60 to 80 (3.75 to 5 USD per GB), a pair of 16GB is 100 to 120 (3.13 USD to 3.75 USD), and a pair of 32GB is 225 to 300 (3.50 to 4.68 USD per GB). So basically, the "sweet spot" is at 16GB DDR4 modules. And considering that the price is trending downwards for the past 3 weeks...When you run something like TrueNAS Core the extra RAM is used for ARC cache to boost performance, and if you ever repurpose the J5005 to function as a hypervisor (which is something that the gemini lakes are decent for), the extra RAM does come in handy - so for small form factor machines I do heartily recommend throwing as much RAM as you can afford into it - you only have 2 slots and 2 channels anyways. If it's cheap, max it out and forget it.

You make valid points.

As long as there are ASS subs for Anime, they get burned. This has been issue for most people with Plex (not sure if it's isolated to just Plex). I mean, I rarely watch Anime but when I do I want the system to be able to handle the transcoding just fine. And yes, when subtitles need to be burned, it requires SW transcoding (so single CPU core frequency is used). I think a 6-core i5 would be too much for my use case. Would a G6400 or a i3-10100 not be enough to achieve this?

I have the same setup on another house, Intel NUC 10 for Plex and most docker containers in my Synology DS1817+ NAS and it works great. However, for the Debian box in question, I want it to be an all-in-one box since I live in a condominium and don't have the space. This box serves just me and my partner so it's not like it's a very critical one. I agree that the J5005 is a very capable CPU for a NAS usage but like I said I want it to be able to handle my Plex needs as well. If I do the upgrade, I can always sell this locally to recuperate some of the costs for the new hardware. And yes, a lower power consumption in total is one of my goals for this system. Another problem I have with the current J5005 system is it has a Realtek Gigabit onboard NIC so I'm using an Intel Gigabit NIC in the PCIe slot to solve this. This means that I don't have an extra slot for the LSI 2308 HBA card.

I'm all for using old hardware that is capable but they're just so hard to source. For example, the ASRock H370M-itx/ac has 6 onboard SATA ports. This would've been very ideal for my use case of needing 6 SATA ports and would not require me to use an HBA card. But that board is impossible to find these days.

For AMD, it's almost always translate to higher power consumption, right?

Yes, I agree that 16GB RAM modules (32GB) is still the sweet spot nowadays. I'm biased towards G. Skill as they've been great for my needs for the past decade or so. So I'll probably go with their non-heatsink models. Do RAM frequency and CAS latency numbers matter for my use case? I know RAM frequency and CAS latency make a lot of difference in prices and from what I remember they only ever matter in benchmark numbers which I have no interest on. Do I just need to get RAM modules with frequency that's natively supported by whatever CPU I get and not mind CAS latency?

 

[WANg]

You make valid points.

As long as there are ASS subs for Anime, they get burned. This has been issue for most people with Plex (not sure if it's isolated to just Plex). I mean, I rarely watch Anime but when I do I want the system to be able to handle the transcoding just fine. And yes, when subtitles need to be burned, it requires SW transcoding (so single CPU core frequency is used). I think a 6-core i5 would be too much for my use case. Would a G6400 or a i3-10100 not be enough to achieve this?

I have the same setup on another house, Intel NUC 10 for Plex and most docker containers in my Synology DS1817+ NAS and it works great. However, for the Debian box in question, I want it to be an all-in-one box since I live in a condominium and don't have the space. This box serves just me and my partner so it's not like it's a very critical one. I agree that the J5005 is a very capable CPU for a NAS usage but like I said I want it to be able to handle my Plex needs as well. If I do the upgrade, I can always sell this locally to recuperate some of the costs for the new hardware. And yes, a lower power consumption in total is one of my goals for this system. Another problem I have with the current J5005 system is it has a Realtek Gigabit onboard NIC so I'm using an Intel Gigabit NIC in the PCIe slot to solve this. This means that I don't have an extra slot for the LSI 2308 HBA card.

I'm all for using old hardware that is capable but they're just so hard to source. For example, the ASRock H370M-itx/ac has 6 onboard SATA ports. This would've been very ideal for my use case of needing 6 SATA ports and would not require me to use an HBA card. But that board is impossible to find these days.

For AMD, it's almost always translate to higher power consumption, right?

Yes, I agree that 16GB RAM modules (32GB) is still the sweet spot nowadays. I'm biased towards G. Skill as they've been great for my needs for the past decade or so. So I'll probably go with their non-heatsink models. Do RAM frequency and CAS latency numbers matter for my use case? I know RAM frequency and CAS latency make a lot of difference in prices and from what I remember they only ever matter in benchmark numbers which I have no interest on. Do I just need to get RAM modules with frequency that's natively supported by whatever CPU I get and not mind CAS latency?

Hm...It really depend on whether you do a large number of transcoding streams, or it's a once in awhile thing. I went through that phase in my life (quite a long time ago) where I'll transcode a bunch of videos I've pulled off torrent just so I can watch it on my phone during the commute. However, nowadays it's a once-in-a-while thing, and I don't really spin it up that much. That's why I tend to prefer the low TDP Intel or embedded Ryzens...it keeps my apartment quiet while it churns away in the background, and it's easy enough on the power bill that the minister of finance (the missus) doesn't say anything about it. As for whether you need a six-core? Eh...no, a G6400/i3-10300 is just fine for occasional use, but if it's for software transcoding your money goes longer if you go AMD nowadays.

AMD is actually known for their better power consumption nowadays on the desktop side (since Intel has been stuck on 14nm since Broadwell, and other than cleaning up Skylake for 3 more generations (Kaby, Whiskey. Comet) all they did to keep up with AMD was to cram more cores in (and push up the TDP))...while AMD both improved their process (28nm GlobalFoundry on the Piledriver/Steamroller/Excavator series to 14nm on the Zen, then 12nm on the Zen+, then TSMC 7nm on the Zen 2 and 3s), their IPC per core and fit more cores in. For CPU I favor AMDs if possible but I don't pass up on cheap Intel cores.

Eh, yeah, I hear you concerning the Realtek NICs - they used to have some truly crapulent showstopping drivers that would KP kernel 2.6/3.x machines at the worst, or toss packets inefficiently with higher CPU utilization in the least, although it's been getting better. In the case of small form factor ITX boards the vendors favor Realtek...mostly because it's cheap and the RTL8111Cs can do AMD DASH on the Ryzen boxes. Although...see if you can score a good industrial board - sometimes clueless liquidators will flip them on the cheap, and they are usually Intel i212/217/219LM NICs.

Eh, yeah, the older ITX boards have more built-in SATA ports. Part of it is the chipset trimming back support, but part of it is people looking for smaller (in volume) machines for ITX cases (USFF/fat NUCs, as I call them). Most people who need more drive bays tend to use MicroATX anyways, and to paraphrase Monty Python: "more SATA ports on ITX? Not much call for it around here"

Eh, regarding speed and CAS? On your J5005, not that important. On the older Lakes and on the Ryzens, there are some impact, but not really noticeable in the real world. You might claw back 1-3 fps gaming or you can render 2-3 fps, but on normal usage, a machine with DDR4-2666 and DDR4-3200 SODDIMMs feels almost the same - I had 32GB DDR4 SODIMMs in both speed increments on my brand new Tiger Lake laptop...I honestly can't tell a difference (the DDR4-3200s were cheaper, but that's because I bought them a week ago...while the DDR4-2666 were over the summer). I mean, if you get faster RAM it'll just get clocked back anyway. I'll basically say, get faster ones if the pricing is similar, but otherwise, whatever reasonably priced RAM that it can take will usually be fine.

 

[kevindd992002]

Hm...It really depend on whether you do a large number of transcoding streams, or it's a once in awhile thing. I went through that phase in my life (quite a long time ago) where I'll transcode a bunch of videos I've pulled off torrent just so I can watch it on my phone during the commute. However, nowadays it's a once-in-a-while thing, and I don't really spin it up that much. That's why I tend to prefer the low TDP Intel or embedded Ryzens...it keeps my apartment quiet while it churns away in the background, and it's easy enough on the power bill that the minister of finance (the missus) doesn't say anything about it. As for whether you need a six-core? Eh...no, a G6400/i3-10300 is just fine for occasional use, but if it's for software transcoding your money goes longer if you go AMD nowadays.

AMD is actually known for their better power consumption nowadays on the desktop side (since Intel has been stuck on 14nm since Broadwell, and other than cleaning up Skylake for 3 more generations (Kaby, Whiskey. Comet) all they did to keep up with AMD was to cram more cores in (and push up the TDP))...while AMD both improved their process (28nm GlobalFoundry on the Piledriver/Steamroller/Excavator series to 14nm on the Zen, then 12nm on the Zen+, then TSMC 7nm on the Zen 2 and 3s), their IPC per core and fit more cores in. For CPU I favor AMDs if possible but I don't pass up on cheap Intel cores.

Eh, yeah, I hear you concerning the Realtek NICs - they used to have some truly crapulent showstopping drivers that would KP kernel 2.6/3.x machines at the worst, or toss packets inefficiently with higher CPU utilization in the least, although it's been getting better. In the case of small form factor ITX boards the vendors favor Realtek...mostly because it's cheap and the RTL8111Cs can do AMD DASH on the Ryzen boxes. Although...see if you can score a good industrial board - sometimes clueless liquidators will flip them on the cheap, and they are usually Intel i212/217/219LM NICs.

Eh, yeah, the older ITX boards have more built-in SATA ports. Part of it is the chipset trimming back support, but part of it is people looking for smaller (in volume) machines for ITX cases (USFF/fat NUCs, as I call them). Most people who need more drive bays tend to use MicroATX anyways, and to paraphrase Monty Python: "more SATA ports on ITX? Not much call for it around here"

Eh, regarding speed and CAS? On your J5005, not that important. On the older Lakes and on the Ryzens, there are some impact, but not really noticeable in the real world. You might claw back 1-3 fps gaming or you can render 2-3 fps, but on normal usage, a machine with DDR4-2666 and DDR4-3200 SODDIMMs feels almost the same - I had 32GB DDR4 SODIMMs in both speed increments on my brand new Tiger Lake laptop...I honestly can't tell a difference (the DDR4-3200s were cheaper, but that's because I bought them a week ago...while the DDR4-2666 were over the summer). I mean, if you get faster RAM it'll just get clocked back anyway. I'll basically say, get faster ones if the pricing is similar, but otherwise, whatever reasonably priced RAM that it can take will usually be fine.

Yeah, it's not a common occurrence for me too but I want my server to still be capable of doing it when I need to. So I have a friend with a G5400 system and this is his system's power consumption at idle:

http://imgur.com/wrllubx

That's 10 watts idle for the whole system and the G6400 is probably more optimized even just a little bit so it can't be far off. How is this idle power consumption be far from the 15-20 watts you mentioned earlier?

If I go with AMD, which modern processor would be the best bang-of-the-buck? I have limited knowledge when it comes to AMD.

Would it make more sense to go with a micro ATX vs a mini ATX system? I'm reading that a microATX board is cheaper than a miniITX. If I go this route, I would need to buy a new case too.

 

[WANg]

Yeah, it's not a common occurrence for me too but I want my server to still be capable of doing it when I need to. So I have a friend with a G5400 system and this is his system's power consumption at idle:

http://imgur.com/wrllubx

That's 10 watts idle for the whole system and the G6400 is probably more optimized even just a little bit so it can't be far off. How is this idle power consumption be far from the 15-20 watts you mentioned earlier?

If I go with AMD, which modern processor would be the best bang-of-the-buck? I have limited knowledge when it comes to AMD.

Would it make more sense to go with a micro ATX vs a mini ATX system? I'm reading that a microATX board is cheaper than a miniITX. If I go this route, I would need to buy a new case too.

For a Dell Optiplex 5080 with its standard Dell SFF chassis / 80 Bronze PSU, the idle figure is ~15-20w measured on the tap (using an Ekecity Voltson) with a G6400, 16GB of RAM (2x8 DDR4 DIMMs) and a 256GB Intel 600p NVMe SSD. Do remember that the number of DIMMs, the board make-up, the type of cooler, the efficiency of the PSU, what different storage on the machine (and whether they are setup to spin down) also changes your system-wide idle consumption figures. In a NAS application, the drives you install takes up a large chunk of the idle figure as well. An average WD Red Plus 5400rpm NAS drive is anywhere between 1 (spindown), 3 (idle) and 7 (red/write) watts while in use, while the WD Red Pro/Seagate Ironwolf pros or the HGST Deskstar NAS drives eat up about 30% more power on average.

Eh, I am not really a fan of ITX - it always felt as if you are shoehorning all your accessories into a format that was originally designed for thin clients (take a look at a Wyse Winterm 9450XE if you need proof). Fractal did a hell of a job with what they have, but ITX boards and cases are always expensive for their size, and you don't have much future growth out of it.

What about AMD? Something cheap or something more future resilient? if cheap is what you want, gun for an Athlon Gold - they are basically Zen1 cores in cheap/cheery packages...they'll do just fine versus the Gemini Lake Atoms or the gimped Coffee/ice Lake Cores.
If you want something that's good for the future - gun for something in the Zen2/Ryzen 4000 range - those are the more advanced 7nm models with better IPC, and the small fab node allows for higher core count. For some serious future proofing and if it's on my money, probably drop some coin on a Ryzen 3 4300 or Ryzen 5 4600G, gun for an Asrock X570D4U, and a mATX case. About 8-900 bucks all-in, but it'll be powerful, quiet, expandable, and it'll probably do everything you want out of a NAS/plex combo machine without tripping the usual 20 Amp apartment power circuit for the next few years.

 

[kevindd992002]

For a Dell Optiplex 5080 with its standard Dell SFF chassis / 80 Bronze PSU, the idle figure is ~15-20w measured on the tap (using an Ekecity Voltson) with a G6400, 16GB of RAM (2x8 DDR4 DIMMs) and a 256GB Intel 600p NVMe SSD. Do remember that the number of DIMMs, the board make-up, the type of cooler, the efficiency of the PSU, what different storage on the machine (and whether they are setup to spin down) also changes your system-wide idle consumption figures. In a NAS application, the drives you install takes up a large chunk of the idle figure as well. An average WD Red Plus 5400rpm NAS drive is anywhere between 1 (spindown), 3 (idle) and 7 (red/write) watts while in use, while the WD Red Pro/Seagate Ironwolf pros or the HGST Deskstar NAS drives eat up about 30% more power on average.

Eh, I am not really a fan of ITX - it always felt as if you are shoehorning all your accessories into a format that was originally designed for thin clients (take a look at a Wyse Winterm 9450XE if you need proof). Fractal did a hell of a job with what they have, but ITX boards and cases are always expensive for their size, and you don't have much future growth out of it.

What about AMD? Something cheap or something more future resilient? if cheap is what you want, gun for an Athlon Gold - they are basically Zen1 cores in cheap/cheery packages...they'll do just fine versus the Gemini Lake Atoms or the gimped Coffee/ice Lake Cores.
If you want something that's good for the future - gun for something in the Zen2/Ryzen 4000 range - those are the more advanced 7nm models with better IPC, and the small fab node allows for higher core count. For some serious future proofing and if it's on my money, probably drop some coin on a Ryzen 3 4300 or Ryzen 5 4600G, gun for an Asrock X570D4U, and a mATX case. About 8-900 bucks all-in, but it'll be powerful, quiet, expandable, and it'll probably do everything you want out of a NAS/plex combo machine without tripping the usual 20 Amp apartment power circuit for the next few years.

Ok, thanks. I know the reviews on the Intel 11th gen CPU's are generally bad but reviewers say that the upgraded iGPU (UHD 730) is a very good performing iGPU. Would it be worth considering the i5-11400 (the lowest one that has the UHD 730)?

 

[WANg]

Ok, thanks. I know the reviews on the Intel 11th gen CPU's are generally bad but reviewers say that the upgraded iGPU (UHD 730) is a very good performing iGPU. Would it be worth considering the i5-11400 (the lowest one that has the UHD 730)?

Kinda - Comet lake is Intel’s attempt at telling a hardware joke called “let’s try and fab next gen design using last gen’s process and pass the mediocre results onto the consumers”’. it’s basically a 10nm Tiger Lake laptop chip but on their 14nm +++++supermegaawesomefinFet process (the one that was around since the 2015 Broadwell, simply because the 10nm fab was delayed like 3 times, each time forcing Intel to refine and respin on the older process). Compared to the Zen2/3 they run hot and hungry, and if it wasn’t for the fab limits for AMD/TSMC chips making the Ryzen 4000/5000s a bit hard to get a hold of, they would not be all that relevant.

The 12th Gen/Xe-LP? They are good, but their performance depends highly on how many execution units you have on your machine, and how highly clocked it is. On my Tiger Lake i5-1135G7, the 80 EUs make it perform somewhere between Radeon Vega8 and Vega11 integrated graphics. For something like the i5-11400 with the 48 EU, it’ll probably be weaker than a Vega3. i am not sure what their transcoding performance might look like but I would venture a guess that it would not be too great. Even for Handbrake with the non-free drivers using the 1135G7 they don't seem to convert 10 bit 4k60 all that well (i.e. not exactly faster than realtime).

 

[kevindd992002]

For home use, will having 10Gbe really that important as a consideration? If I stay with ITX, I would have only 1 PCIe slot and I'll be using an HBA card for that. So I lose the capability of expanding my system but the question is do I really need to? I can't think of any PCIe device that I'll "potentially" use other than maybe a 10Gbe NIC.

For the CPU, I'm gearing towards more on just going with an i3-10100 unless it's better to wait a few months for the Alder Lake i3's to be released?

 

[kevindd992002]

BUMP!

I went ahead and bought the i3-10100 with an AsRock H570m-ITX board. What cooler is best for this CPU? Is the Noctua H9Li the best one?