I need some help, now that black friday is among us I would like to build a torrent box/media server for direct 4k streaming (maybe streaming service in the future like Plex)
Now I’m between deciding a few pieces of gear I need help with, my idea is too build onto a ASRock pro RS X670E, 7900x (or 7900X3d) and 128 gb of ECC memory. I’ve already got the hard drives, and a spare 4070. The reason for the X3d possibility is if someone comes round for a LAN they can just use the server for the time being.
I chose the pro RS because it’s great. I had a taichi but it shat itself and I replaced it with a pro RS on my 7800X3D build. And I’m in love with it, 6x sata, 4dimms @6000mhz 64gb no probs. If you know of an 8x sata, X670E with a similar price point feel free to point it out.
Now where I do need help is with the Ram situation . I’m gonna require ECC I think, but I don’t know too much about the current ECC situation. What is registered, or unbuffered. Can I use either on AM5? I see people recommending certain ECC sticks with like 4800mhz, unbuffered. But in gskill website there’s 6400mhz zeta sticks. Why can’t we just use those? And on-top of that ECC situation, I’ve done some reading and I’ve have found people mentioning that ECC on AM5 has been disabled?!? As you can see I am stupid, and need some edumacatioms on this subject.
I’m also willing to purchase like a 4u “ready to go” platform box with whatever you guys recommend, as long as the price is reasonable.
In general, all AM5 CPUs (so far?) support ECC, the issue is with the motherboard, which has to support it too.
DDR5 comes in two variants RDIMM (registered) & UDIMM (unregistered). AM5 only supports UDIMMs. They are physically incompatible (different pins). UDIMMS come in both ECC and non-ECC. RDIMMS always have ECC AFAIK.
I’m not sure if ECC is working on Asrock (except for the Asrock rack server boards). But there are some members here who confirmed working ECC on Asus boards.
Sata does not seem to be a priority on most AM5 boards, but I don’t see the point in spending a lot to get more sata since there are m.2 → multiple sata adapters or pcie sata controllers that are a cheap upgrade in a $200 board (compared to getting a $500 one with only 2 or 4 sata ports more).
I am a bit puzzled why you would need such a beefy machine for direct 4k playback? You would pretty much always be limited by network/internet, unless you have some crazy 10Gb+ connection and serving 100+ UHD bluray quality streams. And even then you would be limited by storage rather than CPU/memory?
Yeah ECC UDIMM is a pain in the ass when it comes to what boards support it (and availability+price is the worst of all memory). All Ryzen and most Intel Core support ECC. But it’s the boards (and in Intels case chipset) that needs support too. Things are way easier in server land…
I have an X670 AsRock Steel Legend and I got ECC, PFEH (Platform first error handling) and the usual things that speak for ECC support in my BIOS. I don’t have any DDR5 ECC UDIMMs, so I was never able to test it.
ASUS ProArt boards lists ECC UDIMMs in their QVL, so do AsRock Rack boards.
And because it’s the best memory. We consumers aren’t allowed the good stuff. DDR3 and 4 RDIMMs had the same pins and were not supported. Buy fancy server CPU!
Torrent uses maybe half a core unless you got like 10Gbit+ WAN. Watching or transcoding videos is usually done by iGPU or GPU and 4k transcoding on CPU isn’t economical.
If you are directly streaming a 4k rip (to another pc) you are literally just reading a file and sending it over the network at 12 MB/s (100Mb/s). A raspberry pi can do that.
If you want to serve many users, it’s different, but that is unlikely unless you have multi Gb internet upload.
If you want to transcode 4k you’ll need a decent GPU.
No. The one machine will be playing the media. Not to another PC yet. Maybe in the future. But now now.
So what do you guys recommend? I’m currently doing the torrent thing on my 7800x3d and I think I’m gonna need something beefy with how it performs and behaves now.
Really? How is it lacking? Torrenting is really not that demanding unless you have some crazy 10Gb internet connection.
To play back 4k you only need a semi-modern GPU that can decode H265 (for blurays) and/or VP9 (for youtube/internet streams).
I have a i3 12100 as a media server and it can transcode 4k on the iGPU, torrenting does not even show up as a load on that CPU (300/100 Mb connection). I used to torrent my ‘linux ISOs’ on a raspberry pi 3 and that worked fine.
I get strange behaviour when torrenting huge torrents simultaneously, if Ive got a couple hundred active torrents and add 100gb+ torrent files. The client stalls downloading until it addresses the torrents or something, and if I go to use the client after a long period of not touching the machine it hangs like shit. Not only that, but I’m heavily using the I/O in this respect, would I not want or require a machine with some decent power?
If your saying I dont need it, what I’ll do is buy some Unregistered ECC and do my best to confirm it’s working on my PRO RS, then buy another PRO Rs coz I’ve got an 7600x spare. A d I’ll just use that? Sounds like a better plan now right?
Sounds like you are torrenting on a slow hdd? You may be running out of memory and windows(?) may be moving the client to swap while you are doing something more demanding. Which client are you using? If you use a lot of storage how are the drives setup? Raid? You might need more ram to multitask but on a dedicated machine you would need less, as there will be no competition for ram with whatever else you are doing.
Testing ECC on your current board sounds like a good plan. Ifyou have the spare 7600x you can start with that and upgrade if needed? If you have the parts and can build this cheaply there is not much harm in overspeccing a bit
In the thread I linked there is some explanation on testing ECC on Linux. On windows I have no idea how to do it.
Nah the X3d machine has great spec. Exos x16, 16tb HDDs. nVME, 64gb ram.
The client is qbittorent.
This ECC stuff really is hurting me, I have no idea how I’m going to verify if ECC is working on the board. I might just email ASRock, as we are deep into the maturity of AM5 and past agesa 1005a
Having ECC modules on the QVL does not prove ECC is working. Unless it explicitly says so. ECC modules can work in non-ECC mode if the board does not support it or you simply switch it off in the bios. Since you already own the board you can just try it (perhaps even with just a single module since they don’t come in kits any way)
Are you using raid on your hard drives? Check task manager during those slowdowns. Is memory full, and/or HDD at 90+ use? That will show your bottleneck. Qbittorrent will pre-allocate files when you add torrents. On a single hdd with 250 MB/s bandwidth and slow seek that can take a bit for huge torrents (but still much faster than your internet connection!)
I’ve emailed ASRock about the ECC support. I’m also skeptical about ECC working on the Asus board that’s been verified. I just seems unlikely that it would but not with ASRock… It’s probably like you said. ECC dimms are supported but not ECC itself.
I need to find a spare stick and verified way to check this because these dimms are expensive!
