HI all,
I’m currently using an old QNAP for PMS but looking to upgrade to something that can handle h265 audio transcodes (from DTS to AC3) - Alot of people are suggesting Gen8’s but they seem to be rocking horse poo these days.
I’ve been looking at the Gen10’s and wondered if anyone had successfully used them? Are they worth it? Most of the content i have mainly will just need the audio transcoding.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Craig
What CPU power do you have? The biggest issue with H.265 (HEVC) is the decoding part. Everything else is a, relatively speaking, piece of cake.
No they aren’t ‘rocking horse poo’. HEVC HDR requires a team of Clydesdale horses to decode
@ChuckPA said:
What CPU power do you have? The biggest issue with H.265 (HEVC) is the decoding part. Everything else is a, relatively speaking, piece of cake.No they aren’t ‘rocking horse poo’. HEVC HDR requires a team of Clydesdale horses to decode
My current QNAP is a ts559 pro + so i think it’s maybe a Atom D510 1.66 GHz. It does an amazing job of providing the content and playing most files but struggles with DTS mostly. I’ve been having to manually download them to my PC and transcode the audio.
My movies mostly play direct but my TV doesn’t handle DTS so when it transcodes, it causes the screen to freeze up with green squares.
Also, by ‘rocking horse poo’, i meant hard to find to buy one 
Was thinking of the GEN10 but heard that it’s a downgrade so wanted to know if it’s better to locate a GEN8.
Appreciate the help and support
Thanks for that info. Yes, the Atom D510 will shovel the data nicely but in the PMS context it’s grossly under powered. As you’ve seen, then the transcoder gets involved, the eggs tumble from the basket quickly.
Regarding the HP… The Gen8 won’t do HEVC transcoding. You might be able to get it to decode 8-bit (non HDR) but it definitely will not decode HDR. It can only muster 4427 Passmarks. I have an i7-3740 (8000 Passmarks) and it can’t touch HEVC HDR.
For you, decoding the HEVC input, pushing the video stream unaltered and transcoding the audio (while trivial with the xeon), is on the edge of what it might be able do. Remember, it was launched in 2012. The model itself is 6 years old now and the processor even older.
https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E3-1220L+V2+%40+2.30GHz
My personal opinion it to step away from those older machines if you want HEVC capability at any level. 4K is extremely demanding and the first Intel chip capable of hardware decoding 8 bit HEVC is the SkyLake platform. Xeons don’t have GPUs. Now, should you locate a 8+ core xeon, you can probably muscle your way through it with software decode but I have no experience with it.
@ChuckPA said:
Xeons don’t have GPUs.
The entry level E3 12x5 v5/v6 cpus have a Intel P530, P580 or P630 GPU like their consumer level counterparts.
Now here is the thing: some motherboard supporting those cpus disable the buildin GPU and use a cheap onboard solution.
Xeons don’t have GPUs that you can use in those boxes 
Thanks for reminding me to clarify.
E3 series: Some do
E5 & E7 series: None
Hello, Did you purchase a Gen 10 Machine, I’m intersted in this answer too as my current PMS is sick?
Given the Gen 10 is now a AMD chip, Whats the conversions like?
Me too. I was just in an AMD training on the new AMD servers and the Microservers came up. I’d like to retire my Mac Mini and all the external drives and have in one box.
I have just bought a Gen 10 a few days ago. I install Ubuntu 16.04.4 server on it. And hardware-accelerating encoding/decoding not work very well.
@“doctorjzy@gmail.com” said:
I have just bought a Gen 10 a few days ago. I install Ubuntu 16.04.4 server on it. And hardware-accelerating encoding/decoding not work very well.
Can you clarify in what way it doesn’t work well?
@“doctorjzy@gmail.com” said:
I have just bought a Gen 10 a few days ago. I install Ubuntu 16.04.4 server on it. And hardware-accelerating encoding/decoding not work very well.
I was also wondering if you could provide an update or more information, Im interested in getting a gen 10
The absolute best value system for PMS is an ex-corporate desktop PC used on eBay. These are very well built, dirt cheap & even five year old systems will have plenty of CPU for transcoding using hardware (if you really must transcode). I recently bought an i3-4130 system with 8GB RAM & a 320GB disk for just £70 but here is a similar one for £84.99 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-ProDesk-400-G1-SFF-Desktop-PC-i3-4130-3-4GHz-4GB-1TB-SATA-DVDRW-Win-8-Pro/112987195034?hash=item1a4e8fc69a:g:EGQAAOSwGV9a9ZjW or an i5-4570 for £135 https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/HP-ProDesk-400-G1-SFF-i5-4570-3-20GHz-8GB-RAM-750GB-HDD-DVD-RW/222951182215?epid=21006398129&hash=item33e8ed0f87:g:JXYAAOSwMm1a40Nb
An i5-4570 will be far more powerful than AMD X3421 in an HP Microserver. Even a system with an i3-4130 will be faster in single stream processing.
Hi all sorry for the bump on this but the gen 10 recently became available for purchase in my country and I have wanted a gen8 for long and now I see a gen10 … I thought to myself “this thing must be able to be a Plex server” but now reading all the above posts Iam not so sure and for me well in my county it is a lot of money to just give out for something that might just be “ok” Also before reading all the above I also was reading this thread
Which also contains a link to this article
Can we not upgrade the cpu to some sort of Xeon ?
I was really hoping that the gen8 or gen10 could be an perminate long term solution.
Currently tho I have a laptop that has the job of being my server and then Iam using a pi as a client to view from my main lounge tv
For anyone who still had hope to turn a micro gen 10 into a small use case pms server, ive posted results from my all amd build fully transcoding a 50g 4k hevc 10bit to 1080p h264 here.
