Need help choosing a processor for my 2nd build...

[Jorsher]

I'm sure someone here is a Xeon expert. Yes, I've read the hardware guide. It certainly helped with a lot of situations, but the Xeon naming-scheme still eludes me. It was easier when I built my last NAS...

What I'm looking for in a Xeon:
- Under $500
- The latest process, which I believe is 14nm
- ECC support, of course
- Preferably, built-in 10gbe support to avoid an add-in card, but not at the expense of performance
- The best performance possible for things like -- Plex
- Preferably, an iGPU, though it's also not a requirement since I can find a motherboard with on-board video

A Xeon isn't a requirement, but it seems I can guarantee some standard motherboard features (IPMI for example) if I use one.

Here's what I'm looking at, but other suggestions are welcome:

 

[joeinaz]

I'm sure someone here is a Xeon expert. Yes, I've read the hardware guide. It certainly helped with a lot of situations, but the Xeon naming-scheme still eludes me. It was easier when I built my last NAS...

What I'm looking for in a Xeon:
- Under $500
- The latest process, which I believe is 14nm
- ECC support, of course
- Preferably, built-in 10gbe support to avoid an add-in card, but not at the expense of performance
- The best performance possible for things like -- Plex
- Preferably, an iGPU, though it's also not a requirement since I can find a motherboard with on-board video

A Xeon isn't a requirement, but it seems I can guarantee some standard motherboard features (IPMI for example) if I use one.

Here's what I'm looking at, but other suggestions are welcome:

Before recommending anything, I have several questions:

1. What are you trying to accomplish with your solution?
2. The second question is what hardware do you already have that may form part of your FreeNAS solution?
3. As for the ECC and 10GbE requirements are you referring to your choice of motherboard?
4. Regarding performance, are you more interested in the best FreeNAS performance per dollar or the "latest technology"?

Let us know...

 

[Jorsher]

Before recommending anything, I have several questions:

1. What are you trying to accomplish with your solution?
2. The second question is what hardware do you already have that may form part of your FreeNAS solution?
3. As for the ECC and 10GbE requirements are you referring to your choice of motherboard?
4. Regarding performance, are you more interested in the best FreeNAS performance per dollar or the "latest technology"?

Let us know...

Joe,

1. Performance that isn't bottlenecked by the CPU for data transfers and that would be able to support 2-4 high-quality Plex transcodes without impacting performance. I also may set up a VPN server, torrent server, or simple web-server...but I could always run the VPN server from my high-end router since it's unlikely I'll have more than 1 client connected, a torrent server such as rTorrent+ruTorrent has low resource requirements, and a simple web-server I could easily run from a desktop or without using much resources on the NAS. So to back up and simplify...the best performance possible with Plex.
2. None. All my hardware is in the USA and I don't have anyone to depend on for removing parts, and shipping a 4U enclosure is not an option at my location. I will need to build from scratch.
3. I understand the motherboard must support ECC, and that it could also support 10gbe, but I remember reading in the hardware guide about processors that have some form of dedicated 10gbe processing. I guess I could put this in the "not important" category since there are so many other options.
4. My primary interest is "latest technology" for the improved efficiency (even if I never reach an ROI), and secondary is the best performance under $500. I think I will check synthetic benchmarks for the processors above, but synthetic benchmarks are not always equal to real-world.

 

[Jorsher]

Intel Xeon E3-1275 v6 @ 3.80GHz is what I'm leaning towards right now.
I think is the one I will go with based on Passmark single-core and overall performance, price, and price is fair at ~$400. It has an 11,000 Passmark which should support a 4K/HVEC transcode, but honestly I can't see myself needing to transcode 4K any time soon. At least, not while I'm overseas. It supports up to 64gb ECC but has only 16 PCIE lanes. I need to verify this will be sufficient.

 

[IQless]

Is this going to be a standalone FreeNAS box? or are you going with a hypervisor with FreeNAS as a VM?

If this is to be a standalone box, you won't need the E3-1275 as the integrated graphics won't give you anything in FreeNAS.

 

[Jorsher]

Is this going to be a standalone FreeNAS box? or are you going with a hypervisor with FreeNAS as a VM?

If this is to be a standalone box, you won't need the E3-1275 as the integrated graphics won't give you anything in FreeNAS.

Could they be used for any sort of advantage with the Plex media server? I wasn't sure if it would add some hardware acceleration while transcoding.

Even if I can't use it, it seems to be the best performance in my price range unless I go to older generation CPUs, which I'm trying to avoid for the differences in efficiency.

 

[IQless]

AFAIK FreeNAS doesn't support any form of hardware acceleration for Plex. Have you checked the 1270 or 1280? Might be you could find them better and/or cheaper than the 1275.

 

[anmnz]

unless I go to older generation CPUs, which I'm trying to avoid for the differences in efficiency

Have you actually run the numbers on the "efficiency" that you are looking for? And what exactly are you trying to optimise for?

If you're thinking in general about compute-power-per-watt, the really big improvement in recent years happened between the Nehalem and Sandy Bridge generations of Intel CPUs. Improvements after that are incremental. So if you are looking for an "efficient" CPU simply to reduce your power bill, sticking to the latest generations may be a false economy.

(For my own biased example look at the system in my signature. A more up-to-date Skylake system would cost a little less to run, but the difference is measured in tens of dollars/pounds/euros/... per year, and will never over the life of the system come anywhere close to the hundreds I saved by buying older-gen Ivy Bridge and DDR3 parts.)

Then again maybe you are thinking about something else by "efficiency", like performance inside a specific constrained thermal envelope, or some specific workload. I don't know. The newer generations of Intel Xeons certainly.do have big benefits, I'm just saying they aren't always a compelling choice if.you run the numbers for your own use case.

 

[Stux]

Fwiw, I went with a E5-1650v4

6 core. 4+ghz turbo. Lots of PCIe lanes and memory slots. Sensible non metallic marketing scheme.

 

[Jorsher]

Have you actually run the numbers on the "efficiency" that you are looking for? And what exactly are you trying to optimise for?

If you're thinking in general about compute-power-per-watt, the really big improvement in recent years happened between the Nehalem and Sandy Bridge generations of Intel CPUs. Improvements after that are incremental. So if you are looking for an "efficient" CPU simply to reduce your power bill, sticking to the latest generations may be a false economy.

(For my own biased example look at the system in my signature. A more up-to-date Skylake system would cost a little less to run, but the difference is measured in tens of dollars/pounds/euros/... per year, and will never over the life of the system come anywhere close to the hundreds I saved by buying older-gen Ivy Bridge and DDR3 parts.)

Then again maybe you are thinking about something else by "efficiency", like performance inside a specific constrained thermal envelope, or some specific workload. I don't know. The newer generations of Intel Xeons certainly.do have big benefits, I'm just saying they aren't always a compelling choice if.you run the numbers for your own use case.

Here's how I formed my decision:

1) cpubenchmarks.net price/performance charts
2) from the top, go down and look at Xeon processors under $500
3) look at TDP, price, single core and multi core performance

The constraints of the case limit the CPU cooler options. The cooler I intend to use doesn't recommend going above a TDP of 95w. I'm upgrading the fan from a 14mm height to a 25mm height, but I'm not sure how much of a TDP increase that will comfortably allow.

Here are the three I strongly considered:

E5-2680v2 10-core
115w, $350
15789 passmark
1810 single thread

E5-2660v2 10-core
95w, $305
13286 passmark
1475 single thread

E3-1275v6 4-core
73w, $363
11047 passmark
2359 single thread

Now, there may be some large benefit to LGA2011 over LGA1151 that I'm missing. With the size of the case, I'm not sure what I could gain from additional PCIE lanes. Would the additional cache or cores be useful?

This will only be used for FreeNAS and Plex. I won't be transcoding a lot of streams, so figured improved single core performance would be nice.

The E5s are certainly tempting. I have two in my home server.

 

[joeinaz]

Now, there may be some large benefit to LGA2011 over LGA1151 that I'm missing. With the size of the case, I'm not sure what I could gain from additional PCIE lanes. Would the additional cache or cores be useful?

What case are you considering? How many disks will you be using? My new server case holds 12 disks in a tower. I have 2 extra systems that I may soon part with. One holds 10 disks internally the other 12. Both are basically mid-tower systems.

Here's how I formed my decision:

1) cpubenchmarks.net price/performance charts
2) from the top, go down and look at Xeon processors under $500
3) look at TDP, price, single core and multi core performance

The constraints of the case limit the CPU cooler options. The cooler I intend to use doesn't recommend going above a TDP of 95w. I'm upgrading the fan from a 14mm height to a 25mm height, but I'm not sure how much of a TDP increase that will comfortably allow.

Here are the three I strongly considered:

E5-2680v2 10-core
115w, $350
15789 passmark
1810 single thread

E5-2660v2 10-core
95w, $305
13286 passmark
1475 single thread

E3-1275v6 4-core
73w, $363
11047 passmark
2359 single thread

Now, there may be some large benefit to LGA2011 over LGA1151 that I'm missing. With the size of the case, I'm not sure what I could gain from additional PCIE lanes. Would the additional cache or cores be useful?

This will only be used for FreeNAS and Plex. I won't be transcoding a lot of streams, so figured improved single core performance would be nice.

The E5s are certainly tempting. I have two in my home server.

If you are doing lots of virtualization high core count may provide more benefit. I believe Plex can also take advantage of multiple cores as well. The challenge is to optimize both. Let me add more processors to the mix:

E5-2650 v2 8 core
95w $100 (on eBay)
13108 passmark
1670 single thread

E5-2618L v3 8 core
75w $300 (on eBay)
12508 passmark
1960 single thread

E5-2630L 6 core v2
60w $75 (on eBay)
passmark 9780
1485 single thread

With the right sized case, you have the option of using more than one CPU. In that environment, you could start with a low power, low cost single CPU and then adding another if your performance requires it. For example two of the E5-2630L v2 CPUs give you cores (and total throughput) that a single E5-2680 v2 at about the same wattage and half the cost. The expense of a dual socket system is in the larger case and power supply needed...

 

[Jorsher]

Yes, a bigger case I could do that. I'm trying to keep it small since I'm overseas and have to ship it there/back at some point. For aesthetics, I'm avoiding towers :) It won't match my Corsair 250D gaming computer. Thanks everyone for the suggestions!

 

[Inxsible]

that would be able to support 2-4 high-quality Plex transcodes without impacting performance.

This will only be used for FreeNAS and Plex. I won't be transcoding a lot of streams,

I know you said you don't care about ROI, but really? Even a Pentium will suffice for "only FreeNAS & Plex", as long as you aren't transcoding more than 1 stream.

Both your quoted posts seem to contradict each other. Are you going to transcode a lot(2-4) or not ?

 

[Jorsher]

I know you said you don't care about ROI, but really? Even a Pentium will suffice for "only FreeNAS & Plex", as long as you aren't transcoding more than 1 stream.

Both your quoted posts seem to contradict each other. Are you going to transcode a lot(2-4) or not ?

I see you post frequently, but I don't think anything I said warranted such a response.

Personally, I don't consider "2-4 streams" to be "a lot." Obviously, it's subjective. It seems like a typical scenario in a home environment. A majority of the time it won't be transcoding that many simultaneously, but I prefer that it can handle it when requested.

I've already purchased my processor and this thread can be marked "closed," but the purpose was to see what options there are. Xeons are kind of silly with the naming compared to desktop processors.

Let me break down what went into my decision. There were a few things that led to my final choice.

1) I'm overseas using military mail. There are size/weight restrictions. At some point, I will have to package it all back up and ship it to my next location. I wanted a case that could fit 8 drives, while also being as compact as possible. If I were home, I would have purchased another 24-bay rack mounted enclosure and a motherboard capable of two powerful Xeons, as I did last time.
2) There are a surprisingly small number of people selling bare NAS enclosures that aren't rackmount that I could find. I did not want a tower, again to keep it as small as possible, and also because I didn't want to set a large tower next to my Corsair 250D mini-itx water-cooled gaming rig. It can be argued that it's silly to care about aesthetics, but if I can without major sacrifices, I will. I decided on the U-NAS NSC-810A.
3) While reading other build threads, after creating this thread, I realized that there are few CPU coolers that fit well in that case. The recommended one had a max (recommended) TDP of 95w. I also learned that the max wattage PSU available for the case was 350w. This changed my CPU choices by making me have to consider TDP/performance. Of course, I like to leave some headroom and not go straight for 95w. A lot of the suggested CPUs, along with the ones I was considering, ranged from 95-135w making them a no-go. It also helped to limit TDP since the PSU options are limited.
4) Plex recommends a 2000 Passmark for a single high quality stream. For 4, I would need at least 8000. I believe Plex transcoding is multi-threaded, but I'm not positive, so to play it safe I wanted a CPU with at least 2000 on a single thread. This CPU addressed that, while the others didn't. Although Plex may not currently support all the latest hardware-accelerated transcoding features, I wanted a CPU that had them in case support is added in the future.

So in summary:
- I wanted to use the NSC-810A for case size, aesthetic, and 8-bays of storage. This limited the cooler options, which limited my max TDP options, which limited my CPU options.
- I wanted the CPU to support up to 2-4 Plex transcodes, which isn't a lot. For this I was looking for a CPU with single-threaded performance over 2000, and total performance over 8000.
- The processor I chose was purchased for $335, has a TDP of only 73w, has 2400 single-thread and 11000+ multi-thread performance, has all the latest hardware acceleration features for encryption and transcoding.

 

[Inxsible]

I see you post frequently, but I don't think anything I said warranted such a response.

I don't see what is so offensive about my post. I was just trying to understand what you are trying to achieve.

 

[Jorsher]

I don't see what is so offensive about my post. I was just trying to understand what you are trying to achieve.

Nothing I'd call "offensive," just a bit snarky.

I know you said you don't care about ROI, but really?

It's not something that can really be discussed on social media without someone taking it the wrong way, but money isn't a huge factor. I'm not going to buy a top-end server CPU that would be insane overkill for my purposes, but I was comfortable spending my budget and wanted the best performance I could get within the thermal envelope of the case/PSU/cooler. I prefer to go a little beyond what I think I need than have to buy something twice when I find out it can't do the job I desired. With the postal system taking 1-2 months to arrive and 1-2 months to return, it limits my abilities to return products I'm unhappy with. I'm willing to spend, but try to be reasonable about it. My gaming PC still uses a 4790k. I've upgraded to a GTX1080 instead of spending money on a new PC, simply because the games I play aren't bottlenecked by the CPU.

Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing a better option. The more I dug into details on the case, what coolers would fit, what PSU options there were, etc -- I realized I needed to place a heavier focus on the TDP as well.

Both your quoted posts seem to contradict each other. Are you going to transcode a lot(2-4) or not ?

I didn't think I was being contradictory :) "A lot" to me is 10+. I'd put 2-4 in the "home" level of use.

Anyway, everyone's suggestions and help was appreciated. A lot of my original thoughts didn't apply once I got into the details, but they certainly will help with considerations in future builds.