Bought a Ryzen 5 2400G. need best non-bank breaking motherboard/ram combo for Media server

As the title states, I just bought a Ryzen 5 2400G to replace my aging FM1 A8-3850.

I use it to power my media server running Emby/SFTP. I run it on Linux so hardware compat is important.
I chose to go with the 2400G because I want to use the iGPU for openOMX transcoding. Also it has 4 cores and 8 threads.

I still need a good motherboard and RAM.

Ideally I would like to have a mITX board as I have a spare Bitfenix Prodigy case but I do have other mATX cases. If I go with a mITX board, I would need a SATA expansion card. I would also like to not breeak the bank.

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Just grab an ASrock Pro4 most likely, should be $75

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I suggest this

The trick is hoping that it already comes with the new BIOS preloaded and isn’t older stock. Otherwise you will need to resort to flashback tricks or getting a ryzen CPU to flash the new BIOS.

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and the RAM? What about the Expansion SATA card?

I don’t want to comment on RAM as that stuff is so price volatile anyway. Just pick something in the 3200MHz C14-C16 range that you can afford. Gskill / Corsair / something like that.

ECC will burn a hole in your pocket and your leg though.

Regarding the SATA expansion card:

  • How many SATA disks do you need to attach?

But if going non Mini-ITX the Pro 4 B350 or Gigabyte Gaming 3 B350 are ice.

I have nothing to contribute but I’m going to stalk how it turns out to be, been puzzling myself that how should I suggest doing this kind of machine for casual gopro footage edits

HEVC/H.265 :sparkles:

My issue with that suggestion is the only 2 phases, that are suppose to power the VEGA gpu… And they have no heatsink…

Other sidenote, does Vega on emby work with openMAX hardware encode? Does it use the media engine on the APU?

Does it use the amdgpu-pro drivers?

if not, I will have to get a card and pick a mATX board and use one of my mATX/ATX cases.

My suggestion

8 phase (6+2)

The board that AMD sent reviewers:

6 phase (4 +2 )


Those boards are both plenty and the cooling sufficient

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have to note that HEVC/H.265 10bit is size wise like third of older H.264, and I cant see the image quality difference

Thats many of them gigabytes, like 10 for each movie

Yes. 6 for the CPU, 2 phases for SoC and GPU…
Unless the CPU phases also power the GPU. Do we know what actually powers the GPU part? Cause I will be worried with those 2 phases for the GPU part…

No, you are factually misled.

Why do I say that?
That VRM on this board can power a full 1800X with 2 CCX’s + overclock.
And no the GPU is on the CPU socket power bus rail. It takes the power which would usually be used for that second core complex.
There is no SoC and GPU vs CPU core divide.

But lets not derail OP’s topic please. This is not the VRM discussion thread again that usually happens when anyone asks for mainboard suggestions :wink:

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There is SoC and CPU divide. I just assumed the GPU was powered by those extra phases, but since

I guess that’s fine…

I don’t think that’s derailing. We don’t want in 6 months the board to just die or something, cause something overheated… VRM componentry is very important part of the motherboard selection. I don’t think this is off topic.

the currently available computer cases I have (including the one currently in use).

NZXT Source White version USB2.0
Fractal Design 2200
Bitfenix Prodigy

I am open to suggestions as long as they are not over $50 and are on Newegg.
They also must have 1 5.25 bay.

I currently have 1 DVDRW drive for Rips.

Here is my current internal drive setup:

New photo by Ian Comings

Gotta love Redhat’s Cockpit :slight_smile:

New photo by Ian Comings

You don’t think several engineers at AMD and many multiple mainboard designers would have thought about this when making a CPU to fit existing mainboards that cope with double the power draw? :thinking:

Why use the SoC’s dedicated power budget (2 phases) for the Vega GPU and ignore the existing (4/6 phase) power budget left from the removed CPU CCX on a board that’s designed to accommodate an 8 core Ryzen 7. :blush:

It’s safe to admit you had a small blunder there. No harm done. :smiley:

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I mean for a SATA expander card you could probably do ok with a 6 port Vantec/Startech?
Anywhere from ~ $70-$110?

How professional is this supposed to be? I presume pretty budget focused, so the nice LSI stuff is out :smiley:

yeah. not going full bore LSI RAID. I run basically LMV2 SoftRAID if RAID at all. more LVM2 plain. I like being able to mix and match my drives. I just need to be able to add more drives in the future. If going mATX or ATX is what it takes then I will do so.

I mean for a NAS style media server I would anyway go for a large case with lots of disk space
Then just stick whatever mATX mainboard in it. The Mini-ITX stuff always costs comparatively more.

But regarding LSI. I had a quick look on newegg and there’s a few LSI SAS/SATA cards for good prices. You would just need a SAS-SATA forward breakout cable and those are around 10 bucks roughly.

Here’s an example:

then I guess I need ATX and mATX recommendations that include onboard graphics. would be nice to have dual LAN but I can work around that if I dont have it. Frankly Im surprised my current Llano APU has handled the load this well for this long. multiple 1080p streams plus live TV streaming. all on a symmetrical 100mbps pipe with no cap.