I am looking to upgrade my media server hardware. Im currently running an FM1 socket ECS board with an AMD Llano A8-3850 APU. When transcoding, this chip is pushed to the absolute max.
I dont want to spend more than $120 for the board and cpu (and RAM if other than DDR3). It must be at least a Quad core. The board needs to have 4+ SATA ports. ideally something where there is an M.2 SSD and 4 additional SATA ports.
My media server is using Emby so it would be nice to take advantage of the hardware supported encoding APIs (QuickSync, NVencode, OpenMAX, and VA_API)
Edit
I am not averse to buying used. It just needs to work and work well.
If you want new, the only thing that comes anywhere near those requirements would be an Athlon X4 860K and the ASRock A88M-G/3.1. There's nothing from Intel that cheap.
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Good idea. He needs a GPU for set up though. A <10$ Nvidia Quadro NVS off ebay should be enough.
//EDIT:
Hold on a second! the CPU should be an APU for the hardware encoding APIs he requested.
Socket 1151 motherboards are like 60$ new for a board with 6 SATA ports. There are some that have DDR3, others only support DDR4.
The Gigabyte H170M-HD3 has DDR3 and a m.2 slot.
If you want something used you could get a combination of an old barebone and a 2nd gen i5 or something. That could be available for under 120 bucks if you are lucky on ebay. Example:
OptiPlex Barebone for 35$
i5-2500 for 57$
Maybe there is a microcenter deal for you.
An 8320E with a board with a basic video chip on it, comes with 6 SATA ports and plenty of PCI/PCIe slots for SATA controller cards. It takes DDR3 but m.2 would be SATA only via adapter card. No NVME on old platforms.
I wouldnt go for less than Haswell. I need the hardware encoding.