Processor Upgrade

[thejamesk]

Hi

I am strongly considering upgrading my processor to something faster and more capable than my i3-6100 (chosen due to ECC support). With my photography and media I need to ensure my NAS can cope with more 4K content playback and storage. My NAS also runs Plex and of course notable choppyness does occur at full quality playback.

Unfortunatly my knowledge on Xeon processors is not too great at current. Does anyone know any suitable compaitible Xeon LGA1151 prosessors I could get that would work with my current heardware. Something that can handle a 4k playback or a couple of 1080 without stress.

Thank you in advance

My Current Part List

 

[HoneyBadger]

It looks like you have options for the E3 v5/v6 Xeons based on the CPU support list.

ASRock Rack > C236 WSI

www.asrockrack.com

There's also support coming for Plex hardware transcode under FreeBSD in an upcoming version, according to the user @jonmayer who has it working in the 11.3 beta using an E3-1245 v3 - although he states that the encoder quality in the older CPUs "isn't great"

Activating Plex hardware acceleration

I updated the Plex pkg and noticed this note: @@@ INTEL GPU OFFLOAD NOTES @@@ If you have a supported Intel GPU, you can leverage hardware accellerated encoding/decoding in Plex Media Server on FreeBSD 12.0+. The requirements are as follows: * Install multimedia/drm-kmod: e.g., pkg install...

www.ixsystems.com

The newer v5/v6 QuickSync blocks might be enough to make it worthwhile though.

What's the purpose of the GT710? You have onboard video on the motherboard; is that just in case you buy a CPU without an iGPU?

 

[reasonsandreasons]

It's hard to get a v5 or v6 E3 CPU that can handle software, real-time 4k transcode. Plex says that you need a Passmark score of 12000 to transcode a 4K SDR file to 1080p, but obviously that's a rough guideline. The E3-1285 v6 hits a 11992 in Passmark, which is right on the edge of workable for 4K SDR. More importantly, though, it has the Kaby Lake (v6) QuickSync hardware, which'll let you do hardware transcoding of 4K HDR and SDR HEVC video when the next version of FreeNAS hits. This means you can just do the transcodes on dedicated hardware and never touch the real meat of the CPU. It does require a Plex Pass, though.

If I were you and really wanted to do 4K transcoding, I'd pick up a E3-1245 v6 CPU and call it a day. It'll let you do three or four 1080p streams without breaking a sweat, and you can fall back on the QuickSync if you need to transcode 4K.

Also, though, it's worth thinking about whether you actually want to be in the business of doing 4K transcoding. It's incredibly processor-intensive, and is going to constrain your hardware choices going forward if you want to do it right. A much, much better solution is keeping the 4K files in a format that can be played directly on your targets and not messing with transcoding, or just keeping a second 1080p copy around for when you'd like to watch it on a non-compatible device.

 

[Apollo]

Why don't you look at AMD?

AMD Threadripper build.

Hi folks, I couldn't find any resource available regarding AMD Threadripper as a viable solution to a Freenas box. I just wanted to chime in with my findings so far. As I have upgraded my personal PC to the latest Threadripper 2950X, I was able to perform some experiment based on existing ZFS...

www.ixsystems.com

Mine is the 1900X as it was nicely priced back then.