CPU choice

[Makaveli6103]

I am looking to build a new freenas system and cannot decide on the processor. I will be using it as a backup server, owncloud and in the future move Plex over from my HTPC (When I get fiber I will have friends streaming from my Plex). I am decided between Core i3, Xeon E3 1260 v2 and E5 2670. Problem with the E5 is finding a motherboard. With the E3 I can find a Supermicro board on Ebay easily. What would you guys recommend?

 

[Ericloewe]

I moved this to a new thread, since it's more appropriate than the Resource's discussion thread.

The question is, how many simultaneous transcodes are we talking about?

 

[SweetAndLow]

E3 system is plenty if it's a skylake system. It will max out at 64gb memory. Why did you choose to jump to a dual processors for the e5 system? Do you actually think you will need 2cpus for processing? If so all the other CPUs you are looking at are not powerful enough

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[joeschmuck]

Yea, you need to actually sit down and define how many Plex streams you plan to provide, the quality of those streams, and the format of the source material. I want to say to visit the Plex forum and you should be able to get a good idea of what CPU horsepower you might need.

 

[Jailer]

Your CPU choices provided seem oddly random. Have you researched hardware requirements and compatibility at all?

 

[Makaveli6103]

Sorry I should have been more specific. I am looking max 4-5 streams at once at 720P (maybe 1080P). The format is going to mostly be MKV rips at 1080p from blu ray's. And with the E5 I was going to run it as a single CPU.

 

[diedrichg]

Start here
https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/ar...CPU-do-I-need-for-my-Server-?mobile_site=true

and then choose here
http://m.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

tl;dr

The Guideline

Very roughly speaking, for a single full-transcode of a video, the following PassMark scores are a good guideline for a requirement:

1080p/10Mbps: 2000 PassMark
720p/4Mbps: 1500 PassMark

The CPU Benchmark website is a good resource to see what sort of PassMark score a particular processor received.

Also to keep in mind - Will you actually need to transcode? Does your client support that video format? Are you serving over your local network or WAN?

 

[SweetAndLow]

Sorry I should have been more specific. I am looking max 4-5 streams at once at 720P (maybe 1080P). The format is going to mostly be MKV rips at 1080p from blu ray's. And with the E5 I was going to run it as a single CPU.

Zero reason to use a dual proc in a single proc motherboard. People need to stop doing this.

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[CookiesLikeWhoa]

I made a FreeNAS specifically for media. 3-4 Plex streams, really only 1 maybe 2 transcoded. 16TB of raw storage, 16GB's of RAM on a C2558 (Supermicro A1SRM-C2558F) and it is plenty strong enough to handle all media needs. The only time I've ever bogged it down was when I had 2 transcoded streams running, updating the movie library on plex, and was uploading 120GB's of TV shows to the NAS all at the same time. Otherwise it hasn't missed a beat. The CPU is actually one of the lowest power things on the whole NAS.

TL: DR get yourself something really lightweight and be happy with the energy savings.

 

[Ericloewe]

Zero reason to use a dual proc in a single proc motherboard. People need to stop doing this.

There are some reasons, but they're unusual. The E5-2xxx series has a lot more variety than the E5-16xx line, especially when it comes to more cores.

 

[pschatz100]

Sorry I should have been more specific. I am looking max 4-5 streams at once at 720P (maybe 1080P). The format is going to mostly be MKV rips at 1080p from blu ray's. And with the E5 I was going to run it as a single CPU.

It depends upon your source material and the compression you use when encoding your rips. The general rule of thumb is that you would need a CPU with a PassMark score equal to 2000 per transcode stream. This formula works more-or-less OK for H.264 and older codecs up to 1080P, but will not be strong enough for decoding H.265 material. I have a Core i3-3240 that just barely fails to transcode one stream smoothly running H.265 at 1080P.

Now, if your playback devices can handle a direct stream (ie: no transcode) then your CPU requirements will be more modest. And don't worry about memory. Transcoding is CPU intensive, not memory intensive.

 

[Kevin Horton]

Plex has a feature called Media Optimizer that does offline transcoding, creating versions of media optimized for specific devices. This avoids the need for real time transcoding, at the expense of storage space for the extra versions of the media. I've never used this feature, so I cannot say how well it works.