Need some advice choosing the right CPU for a low idle power usage file server for video encoding/tr

[keenan]

Alright, so I've got 16gb of DDR4 laying around and looking to get a cheap B350 motherboard with one of the following Ryzen CPU's.

Which one would offer the best performance when needed, but offer the lowest power draw when idle or serving movie files (normally just to the TV)

All three of these can be had for roughly the same price give or take a few £'s..

Ryzen 7 1700X
Ryzen 5 2600
Ryzen 5 3500X

I know the Ryzen 5 3500X has no SMT, so how badly will that hinder file encoding performance? As the 3500X is pretty decent for gaming I'm thinking of getting that and swapping it for the 1600AF in my sons PC..

Is there anything else I should rather be looking at?

 

[Cyber-Mav]

3500x probably best bet from those and yea use the 1600af in the server. although im not sure but the b350 boards have higher power consumption than x470 from what i read. so i assume b450 board would be a better pairing and still cheapo enough.

 

[Avalon]

Firstly ignore TDP, it’s relevance to the real world usage is pretty limited.

If you are doing video encoding and want to use hardware encoding/decoding, then this is one area where Intel is still king. Buy a cheap 6th gen or newer i3 and you can do 15+ 1080p transcodes simultaneously with ease. Plex (with PlexPass), Emby (with Premiere) and JellyFin (as it comes) are all going to support it OOTB with minimal effort and it’s going to leave your CPU idle to do other things or run almost cool/quiet/low power.

If you genuinely want to go AMD, understand that if you throw 4K H265 at most of the CPU’s listed and are using high bit-rate/remux source material, it could get nasty, that said why you would need to transcode is a whole other conversation.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

That's right. Since switching over to android based media players i dont need to transcode anymore the players just access the windows shares and play the files straight up.

 

[keenan]

Firstly ignore TDP, it’s relevance to the real world usage is pretty limited.

If you are doing video encoding and want to use hardware encoding/decoding, then this is one area where Intel is still king. Buy a cheap 6th gen or newer i3 and you can do 15+ 1080p transcodes simultaneously with ease. Plex (with PlexPass), Emby (with Premiere) and JellyFin (as it comes) are all going to support it OOTB with minimal effort and it’s going to leave your CPU idle to do other things or run almost cool/quiet/low power.

If you genuinely want to go AMD, understand that if you throw 4K H265 at most of the CPU’s listed and are using high bit-rate/remux source material, it could get nasty, that said why you would need to transcode is a whole other conversation.

That's right. Since switching over to android based media players i dont need to transcode anymore the players just access the windows shares and play the files straight up.

Thanks for the advice.

In regards to Transcoding..

I use Plex to manage my library and stream remotely when I am on holidays etc.

While I'm not doing it by choice, with the current PC running Plex server, when I watch the content on a either a Fire TV or Samsung Tab S I can see from the log that Plex is transcoding a large amount of the movie files.

Is there any better way to solve this or completely stop it from happening?

 

[Avalon]

Short version: Content. Client. Connectivity.

Content - Choose appropriate settings for your encoded content, that 4K HDR H265 file with the high end audio format may sound cool and have a smaller file size than the AC3 H264 setting, but if your client can’t play it, you just created a massive amount of work for your CPU (or iGPU) to do.

Client - Make sure it actually supports your content format, the visual side being the biggest issue. For example H264 has wider comparability and lower overheads to transcode than H264, yet H265 only really shines above H265 in low bandwidth scenarios. All Plex transcoding outputs H264 and the maximum output is 1080/8 iirc. You may choose to make trade off’s, for example high end audio sounds great through my amp, but every single other client has to transcode it, thankfully the overhead is minimal, so I choose to live with it. Make sure your client requests original quality and not a 720/4 as default.

Connectivity - It doesn’t matter if you choose the right media and the right client, if you can’t connect fast enough to play the file, it’s getting transcoded. Locally this should be fixable, remote (4G/family members WiFi) perhaps not so much.

 

[keenan]

Short version: Content. Client. Connectivity.

Content - Choose appropriate settings for your encoded content, that 4K HDR H265 file with the high end audio format may sound cool and have a smaller file size than the AC3 H264 setting, but if your client can’t play it, you just created a massive amount of work for your CPU (or iGPU) to do.

Client - Make sure it actually supports your content format, the visual side being the biggest issue. For example H264 has wider comparability and lower overheads to transcode than H264, yet H265 only really shines above H265 in low bandwidth scenarios. All Plex transcoding outputs H264 and the maximum output is 1080/8 iirc. You may choose to make trade off’s, for example high end audio sounds great through my amp, but every single other client has to transcode it, thankfully the overhead is minimal, so I choose to live with it. Make sure your client requests original quality and not a 720/4 as default.

Connectivity - It doesn’t matter if you choose the right media and the right client, if you can’t connect fast enough to play the file, it’s getting transcoded. Locally this should be fixable, remote (4G/family members WiFi) perhaps not so much.

Thanks for all the info, I really appreciate it.

A few points which might mean that transcoding is the only way forward for me.

Connectivity being the most important.

When on holiday in South Africa I will only be streaming at 2mbps 720p as very few South African ISPs provide unlimited internet whether it's broadband or mobile (4G).

As far as quality is concerned, the content will only be watched on a 10 inch tablet so 720p @ 2mbps should be ideal and should also not exceed 1GB of network traffic per average length movie.

Another reason is subtitles. I watch with subtitles 75% of the time due to noise, foreign language etc and it seems that enabling subtitles also trigger transcoding.

Would previous generation i5's work with hardware transcoding? I think I might still have a SFF HP PowerDesk 400 G1 with an i5 4590s somewhere in the loft..

If not I am definitely considering just getting an i3 6100 with a budget LGA1151 motherboard to solve all these issues..

I doubt I will ever need more than 5 consecutive transcoded streams.

Would that be sufficient?

Also, will I need the Plex Pass to enable quick sync for transcoding?

 

[Cyber-Mav]

all my content is on my servers drives. i connect to home network via vpn and just access the shares like i would locally. since all my media players and phones can play back h265 no need for transcoding. and most 1080p films are less than 9mbit on the bit rate so well within my 35mbit upload limit. and this worked fine when i was using my hp gen7 microserver which handled the vpn server and network shares and bunch of other stuff.

 

[Avalon]

Thanks for all the info, I really appreciate it.

A few points which might mean that transcoding is the only way forward for me.

Connectivity being the most important.

When on holiday in South Africa I will only be streaming at 2mbps 720p as very few South African ISPs provide unlimited internet whether it's broadband or mobile (4G).

As far as quality is concerned, the content will only be watched on a 10 inch tablet so 720p @ 2mbps should be ideal and should also not exceed 1GB of network traffic per average length movie.

Another reason is subtitles. I watch with subtitles 75% of the time due to noise, foreign language etc and it seems that enabling subtitles also trigger transcoding.

Would previous generation i5's work with hardware transcoding? I think I might still have a SFF HP PowerDesk 400 G1 with an i5 4590s somewhere in the loft..

If not I am definitely considering just getting an i3 6100 with a budget LGA1151 motherboard to solve all these issues..

I doubt I will ever need more than 5 consecutive transcoded streams.

Would that be sufficient?

Also, will I need the Plex Pass to enable quick sync for transcoding?

Subs - use text based .srt’s, as long as you are using H264 media, you should be fine with the 4590, but you need to have PlexPass for hardware transcoding if using Plex, or Emby Premiere if you use Emby, JellyFin doesn’t require you to pay anything for hardware transcoding, but you’d need to check out the client support.

The issue you are likely to face is routing and latency - it would likely be less agro given the connectivity issues and the fact you’re on holiday (so presumably it’s short term?) is just download a load of content to the tablet on microSD or similar.

all my content is on my servers drives. i connect to home network via vpn and just access the shares like i would locally. since all my media players and phones can play back h265 no need for transcoding. and most 1080p films are less than 9mbit on the bit rate so well within my 35mbit upload limit. and this worked fine when i was using my hp gen7 microserver which handled the vpn server and network shares and bunch of other stuff.

Reading this is like stepping back in time 15+ years

 

[Cyber-Mav]

.
Reading this is like stepping back in time 15+ years

Dang its been setup like that for as long as can remember over 10 years atleast. Before that it was a netgear stora but outgrew that long time ago.
I used to use servvio and did the transcoding thing but was just long winded and quality loss ment no point to it.
Surprised people transcode these days since bandwidth is easily available and most clients can play back anything with kodi or some other media player installed.

If you have a better alternative im im all for it. But as you said my last holiday last year i just loaded everything onto a 128gb micro sd card and was more than enough.

 

[Avalon]

Not knocking it, it works well up to a point, but scaling up can be problematic and Plex/Emby provide eye candy and easier management along with the ability to include other services such as PlexAmp or external TV sources (Freeview/Freesat etc.) for a more unified approach.

 

[Cyber-Mav]

Can something like plex pass media over the internet without transcoding?
Id like a simpler method of sharing my media over the internet with phones laptops etc but dont want transcoding. Also i have software etc folders that would be nice to access from other machines without having to give people vpn access to my whole network and shares.

 

[Avalon]

Yes - assuming the available bandwidth is sufficient and the client can support the file format. Folder wise Plex only handles media, you can run private/public shares in other ways though.