I’ve currently got a wee server PC at home that I made from dumpster AliExpress parts & whatever used things I had lying around. It’s been cool to mess with it, but using it as a remote desktop host is pretty awful…Probably because it has an ati 5450 in it
I’m looking for something that can basically a desktop at 60fps with encoding acceleration. Won’t be used for gaming at all, and runs at 1080p. I did look at Intel A310 GPUs but they’re 130 quid used (same as new…) which is more than half the cost of the entire server PC it’d be put into!
Any recommendations? I’m in the UK, so the ebay listings pool is a lot slimmer than the US.
hello @FiftyTifty
for used cards:
nvidia 1050ti or 1060 ti are avaiable for ~30-60 € here in europe. i wouldn’t recommend nvidia-cards older than that cause nvidia-drivers don’t support older cards than this anymore.
there are also used amd r9 cards at a similar price-tag.
Most codeces are available [obv. latest ones, like the AV1, isn’t a thing]
Most older GPUs won’t have fresh driver support [outside of security patch here + there]
PCIe powered [0 supplemental power req’d]
nVIDIA – 1050Tie, P1000, P2000,
AMD - Radeon Pro WX 5100,
1x 6/8pin supplemental power req’d
AMD – Radeon Pro WX 7100
The P1000 is a good shout, they’re 75 quid and also a single slot. Though their encoder will be quite a bit worse than the Intel Arc A310, you get what you pay for at this price point.
But man these prices are a bit much for what amounts to a bargain bin server PC lmao. I can’t find used A310’s anywhere nor any single slot 1050 ti’s.
1050Tie (+ larger chips) and single slot are few and far between-- but they do exist
Older stuff still supports, bulk of A/V codeces [maybe won’t have, as many devoted sub-processors]
A310 is still new enough + 0 B-series successor has come out [which at best, be more efficient]
you likely wont find one any time soon. but im super excited about the b60. i think it was msi or asrock that has one that is single slot fanless, so in a couple years you should be able to pick one up for reasonably cheap on ebay.
Yeah that GPU especially is overpriced for my use-case. The 1050 ti probably is too cause it’s literally just for a single remote display out and not any actual gaming or 3D work.
Lowest I could find is CEX selling a random 1050 ti for 65 quid, but there’s 0 guarantee it’ll have a single slot cooler on it. Blehhh
I go for something like a AMD 580. It is probably a little power hungry and overkill for what you need but it can be found dirt cheap as they were used for crypto mining.
Would be a good idea, just the problem of single slot size. It could be possible to craft a single slot cooler for it if OP has the tools but I would personaly not do it.
I actually have a single-slot 1030, but I have the one with active cooling. There are versions of the card with passive coolers even.
Not exactly sure what you’d use it for - I thought of using it with Jellyfin, but I think for the time being I’ll be fine with raw CPU decoding on my AMD EPYC 8024P - or at least I hope so.
Ooh this is looks like the winner! I didn’t know these existed nor that they had GDDR5 vs the 1030’s DDR4. Time to get this bad boy and see if I can sell a crappy ATI 5450 on Ebay…Which is where I bought it lmao
For streaming from Plex, I just bought a Dell Wyse 5070 as it was 60 quid, sips power, and the iGPU can do 3x 1080p streams at 60fps. But now Plex is removing Watch Together, so I went and cancelled my subscription. Jellyfin looks like a total pain to setup for sync streaming or whatever it’s called, and apparently is super buggy even compared to Plex.
Unfortunately ancient drivers, and I’d be concerned how fast that an old GCN with DDR3 can actually encode 1080p at 60fps lmao. But compared to an ati 5450 it looks much better. Do these even have encoders? Couldn’t find anything on it.
