I need a new server for my PMS. Now I would like to know your oppinion about the config. For me, it is important, that it can transcode 3-4 4k videos and about 6 1080p streams. It must be as cheap as possible but powerful as necessary:
Mainboard: ROG STRIX H470-I GAMING
CPU: [CPU Core i5-10500 3.1 GHz]
CPU Cooler: Noctua [NH-L12S]
Ram: 2x [DDR4-RAM AA101752 SNPY7N41C/8G 1x 8 GB]
PS: Polaris PPS-550FC 550 W
Case: Silverstone SST-SG13B
Additional Fan: [bequiet! Pure Wings 2 140mm]
SSD: 1TB Samsung SSD (have a spare at home)
Are 16GB Ram enough? My database has around 38TB of data and the “holiday clips” are safed on a NAS. Is the CPU able to handle a couple of 4k streams (HDR and dolby vision)? Do I propably need a additional GPU? If yes, wich one would you recommend.
Hi marco.brechbuehl_gmail.com,
Transcoding 3-4 4k HDR streams and 6 1080p streams is afaik way to much for a flimsy 6 core CPU. The good thing about transcoding is you don’t need to care about single core performance too much - which means looking into “aging” cpu generations is probably gonna give you a better deal. On AMD side you get an 8C with decent performance (about the same or little less than the 10500 per core, but has 2 cores more) R5 2700 (tray)
And on the intel side of things you also get 8 cores but rather weak ones and probably not worth the extra buck E5 2450 (traayy)
Regarding the RAM: Depending on how you and the OS uses it. FreeNAS/TrueNAS uses it as a cache, but as you seem to use Windows, you probably don’t need more than that if you don’t run any other programs on it, but again, I’m not a Windows server user.
GPU: Helps you when you can do HW transcoding, which means e.g. no subtitles burning. If you don’t burn any subtitles, you can probably even downgrade your CPU a bit and use that money for a better graphics card.
You don’t need a GPU for hardware transcoding when you use a modern Intel Core ix CPU, because it comes with Quicksync.
But yeah, I agree that 3–4 4K transcodes could be a bit much for an i5.
(Although you’ve already picked a pretty decent one.)
While the quicksync unit might be identical to that of an i7 or i9 of that same “generation”, there is more than the pure decoding and encoding of the video stream:
“burning in” subtitles must be done in software, so having a beefy cpu definitely helps
transcoding high-end surround audio (TrueHD Atmos / DTS:X) is also more demanding on the CPU than transcoding a lossy, low-bandwidth DTS or AC3 stream
you will need even more pure CPU power if you activate the HDR to SDR tonemapping. This can only be offloaded in part to the Quicksync unit.
Additionally, the hardware acceleration of the tonemapping works better on Linux than on Windows at the moment.
So for your requirement, you might end up needing a larger CPU than an i5.
make sure to look up the “generation” of prospective CPU models. Because the newer the generation, the better the Quicksync unit (and the power efficiency as well): Intel Quick Sync Video - Wikipedia
always look up the passmark score of your prospective CPU models and compare them PassMark - Intel Core i5-10500 @ 3.10GHz - Price performance comparison
including their “single thread rating”., because many aspects of transcoding aren’t that well multithreaded in ffmpeg (which is the basis of the Plex transcoder)
