I have a home server with quite a few docker instances (jellyfin, kavita, other home services and a few game servers optionally) that I’m pretty happy with. But, for a variety of reasons, I’ve been thinking about upgrading it with new parts if possible.
Currently that server is rocking my old Intel 4770K 4 Core which has served me pretty well historically but I’m really thinking that there are probably CPUs on the market today and that it’s a good time to upgrade.
CPU
Intel i7 4770k x 4/8
GPU
NONE
RAM
16 GB
Mobo
ASUS z780a
OS
Headless Debian
PSU
Rm750 750W
However, trying to find upgrades to this system has been a bit of a mixed bag. I would ideally like to have a CPU with AV1 hardware encode (not just decode) so I think it would be necessary to have integrated graphics and a relatively new CPU. Additionally, I’d like the efficiency of this CPU to be power efficient enough that it justifies the upgrade but can also scale up to serve content faster where possible.
My goto these days, though this might be overkill for you, is a 7900 which does have a hardware AV1 encoder built in, actually. $350 for the CPU, $150 for the motherboard and another $100 for 32 GB of RAM lands you in the rough ballpark of $600 for the core. Add a cheap 512 GB NVMe SSD with DRAM (Samsung 980 Pro, Western Digital SN850X, Kingston KC3000 and more) and you should be golden.
Though, the value segment at the moment is AM4 5600GT or Intel 12th gen with DDR4.
I’m in the same search as you.
I’d like to focus on a 125h (or high) Intel mini-PC.
What do you think?
The biggest processing would be real-time transcoding in 4k AV1.
You should check out this thread from a couple weeks ago where people helped me analyze CPU options (with a focus on video transcoding and power efficiency).
In the end I settled on the i5-14500. Which would be an enormous performance upgrade while also operating at a lower TDP:
In this thread I’ve been getting great advice on the build as a whole. I’m trying to strike the best balance I can between reliability, performance, and power efficiency.
Depending on your budget, how much performance you want, and exactly how power efficient you’re trying to get, I think you might benefit from skimming through my recent threads.
The Intel will be quickest with low idle power. I have one server that idles at 5w with the 13400 (if you use a data ssd).
i do have it running an M2 SSD currently it sits at 22w average with about 40 Docker containers, cpu usage rarely even hits 25%
You might be thinking of the 7900 GPU? The ryzen 7900 iGPU is RDNA 2 which afaik has av1 decode but only h264/265 encode.
That said if efficiency includes idle intel is much better. Quicksync is also much better than AMDs video engine.
If efficiency is measured at high average loads, AMD is better. But that’s usually less relevant for a home streaming server. If you’re building a rendering server yeah, go with AMD.
I’d say go with a 12400. Won’t suffer from the degradation newer Intel chips do (probably), can do hardware encoding pretty well thanks to its GPU, and will sip power. An alternative is mentioned above (the Ryzen 7 7900) in case you need more power. You can also go with a 7600 if you still want AMD but don’t need 10 cores.
@TwistedTurtle Correct me if I’m wrong, but the 14500 was a refresh that had the burnout or whatever issue fixed, right? I think I read something to that effect a few minutes ago on another thread.
Also, no, AMD’s hardware encoding is an absolute joke and I don’t really expect that to change any time soon. As @quilt point out, that’s software transcoding.
So many people on these threads need to think about not authoritatively suggesting things without actually knowing what there’re talking about…
Only because no serious content creator will ever consider a Radeon card anymore. Even if they did, no serious content creation software support Radeons anymore, because no serious content creator will ever consider Radeon.
Which, sadly, means AMD Radeon GPUs have almost 0 chance going forward. Any new GPU released by AMD will be an uphill battle, so have fun with your $2.5k GeForce 6060s 12 GB y’all
So, I Was initially going to say that just a CPU that supports a recent enough Quicksync version to have AV1 encode, but from checking the Quicksync matrix on Wikipedia it looks like neither Alder or Raptor lake actually supports encode.
That means you’d need to be looking at the Meteor lake or Arrow lake stuff, or adding a GPU with Alchemist/Ada Lovelace
The GPU route wouldn’t be too bad, but you’re adding more cost a power draw.
In light of that you might be best off with one of the Intel Core Ultra 5s.
So what you’re saying not only is it poorly supported, but it’s still not as good?
Because it’s bad… They are going to need to do more than a half assed barely passable transcoder for anyone to care again. People didn’t give up on them because “…no serious content creator will ever consider a Radeon card anymore.” They gave up on them because what they offered didn’t work and wasn’t supported, because it was wholly inferior.
Don’t be a brainless fanboy. It’s not the customer’s fault that AMD didn’t put any effort into having a product that could compete in even a best case scenario.
What I’ve wanted for years, and would gladly buy several of, is a tiny half height, single slot transcoding focused GPU with no obnoxious thread limits like NVENC has. If AMD made one that kicked ass then they would easily sell quite a few and could copy paste the silicon to their high end GPUs.
And yet, it is the customer that will pay $2.5k for entry level GPUs, if AMD goes away. AMD simply does not have the resources to fight the big fight anymore.
If RDNA4 does not sell, AMD will be forced to give up the GPU market. Perhaps this is the way things need to be. But it is a sad day when that happens.
If they want to compete then they need to make something worth buying. I was one of the idiots that bought their FX9590 and there was objectively nothing good about that CPU.
AMD won’t go away, they just need to get their shit together.
This is not a customers not seeing the value problem, its a product not having the value problem. What AMD made isn’t worth buying for many people. As soon as they make something that is a better deal it will sell.
And this is irrelevant to the original thread and should stop. We can make a GPU mud fight thread for that.
What else are you looking at requirements wise? Did you have other stuff mostly picked out apart from the CPU or are you still more early in the planning phase?
