Suggestions for an upgrade


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Looking for a little advice, my current hardware in my signature is accurate.  It's served me well and a higher end processor has never "seriously" been on my list.  In fact my build has been exceedingly stable (knocking on my desk here).  I have had very few real issues.

 

Now i'll soon be on dual parity (as soon as the stable comes out) and I will be adding Plex in the next month or two. 

 

So that being said, the 1st question is, do I need to upgrade the processor / MB to handle dual parity / plex?  My gut feel is I do, but I'm not looking to spend money that isn't needed.  there are times Plex will need to transcode (though not always) and I know that is processor intensive.

 

The 2nd question is if I am upgrading, do I go for a server grade board, ECC Ram, Xeon chip?  I know this will add something like 50-75% to the cost of an i3 / Z97 board. 

 

the 3rd question is any suggestions on the hardware?  I'm not as versed in server grade hardware though I've been looking. 

The slots I need:

1. for my SAS card.

2. one more PCI-E slot depending on how many SATA ports the MB has.  I need 16 SATA ports total.

3. I'd like to have 1 spare slot for future. 

4. I do have two SSD drives in a rack that sits over an unused slot.  So it sort of needs that plastic slot to hold it stable.  very similar to this:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817998052  So I need room for two of those.

 

Any suggestions is much appreciated.

 

 

 

 

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I'm not quite sure which CPU you have, but the AMD Athlon II X2's run from 1376 to 2000 Passmarks.  You might be able to do some light duty transcoding with that chip, but it's time for an upgrade if you want to do any real transcoding.  I recommend starting with a minimum of a 4,000 Passmark CPU for basic unRAID and a single 1080p Plex stream and then 2,000 Passmarks per additional 1080p stream.  That's just a rule of thumb - to be more specific we'd need to talk about your media, your players, and any other transcoding needs.

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I'm not quite sure which CPU you have, but the AMD Athlon II X2's run from 1376 to 2000 Passmarks.  You might be able to do some light duty transcoding with that chip, but it's time for an upgrade if you want to do any real transcoding.  I recommend starting with a minimum of a 4,000 Passmark CPU for basic unRAID and a single 1080p Plex stream and then 2,000 Passmarks per additional 1080p stream.  That's just a rule of thumb - to be more specific we'd need to talk about your media, your players, and any other transcoding needs.

 

AMD Athlon II X2 250 1,760 passmarks.

 

Right now I only have two players, both Dune's and have no need for transcoding.  However, I'm looking at Plex since it opens up so many other options for players and the ability to access remotely. 

 

So having said that my two main viewing stations are Samsung Smart TV's that have a plex app.  My media is mostly MKV files with the original audio streams from BD's or DVD's.  DVD's are mostly original MPEG video and most BD's are H264 encoded video.  My preference is not to transcode for those two TV's.  If the Plex app in the TV won't do that, I'll probably stick with the Dune's in those locations. 

 

Outside of that, it will probably be laptops, iPads, or Roku sticks.  iPads and Roku will need to be transcoded and off site more compressed.    So my transcoding needs are varied. I would say it would be rare to need more than 1 or 2 simultaneous streams, but giving room for the odd occurrence I'd want an 8,000 passmark CPU.  Even if I ever got more than 3 streams going at once, they would not all be transcoding.

 

Any thoughts? 

 

What about server grade MB with ECC RAM vs a Z97 board and i3/5 processor? 

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OK been digging on this a little bit and put some options together. Looking for input.

 

Xeon Options

 

MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157404&ignorebbr=1 $169

CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117316 $254 passmarks 9,617

$423

 

OR

 

MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182336 $271

CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIAAEE4P29559 $188 passmarks 11,535

$459

+ i have to get some cheap video card, there isn't anything on board.  I probably have an old one buried somewhere.

 

OR

 

MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182958R $190

CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1UH3Z96145 $307 passmarks 9,679

$497

 

I have to buy RAM but that should be the same for any of them.  I can use DDR4 with the two more expensive options but is there any reason too?  would DDR3 not be enough for unRAID?

 

i5 option

 

MB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157500 $159

CPU http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117372 $239 passmarks 7,604

$398

This is only $25 cheaper that a much faster Xeon above, but I think I would likely just re-use my RAM unless someone tells me it's really not fast enough for what i'm doing.  So this is really $100-125 cheaper.

 

 

Once again, any thoughts are welcome

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E3 Xeon's are basically Core i5/7 chips that support ECC RAM.  I'm oversimplifying, but not much.  E5 Xeon's are "real" Xeon's with more cores and better pass-through support.  Then again, E3 Xeon's are fine for most unRAID setups.  I'd go with an E5 if you want to go heavy into virtualization or just wants lots of horsepower.  The v2, etc. stands for the generation, like the first character 3,4,6 designation on Core processors.  A Xeon E3 without a version is a Sandy Bridge, a v2 is an Ivy Bridge, v3 is Haswell, and v5 is Skylake.

 

To me the main reason to go with an E3 Xeon is ECC RAM plus the additional server features typically found on a server class board (IPMI, dual LAN, etc).  If ECC is not important to you (or you just want to reuse your existing DDR3 RAM) then a Haswell Core i5/7 (4xxx series) should be fine.  A Haswell E3 Xeon (v3) will probably accept your existing DDR3 RAM as well, allowing you to upgrade to ECC in the future - check the specs.

 

DDR4 is faster than DDR3 but I'm not sure how much faster without the upgraded memory architecture of Skylake CPUs and chipsets.

 

Aside from cost, a disadvantage of the E5 chips is that they're more power hungry (and need good cooling as a result).  Also some of the E5's you linked are older Sandy Bridge chips which are less power efficient than Haswell and Skylake.  If you want the additional horsepower then who cares?  But some people are sensitive to that.

 

Some Xeon's have integrated graphics and some don't - keep an eye on that since the motherboard will need onboard graphics (or you'll need a card) if you don't get a chip with integrated graphics.

 

If you just want to handle Plex and dual parity a high end Core i5/7 or E3 Xeon is probably all you need.  My personal preference is for a Haswell chip over Sandy Bridge.  There are some great deals on Sandy Bridge E5s (including eBay, check threads for E5-2670 chips like this) if you want some real grunt, though.

 

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E3 Xeon's are basically Core i5/7 chips that support ECC RAM.  I'm oversimplifying, but not much.  E5 Xeon's are "real" Xeon's with more cores and better pass-through support.  Then again, E3 Xeon's are fine for most unRAID setups.  I'd go with an E5 if you want to go heavy into virtualization or just wants lots of horsepower.  The v2, etc. stands for the generation, like the first character 3,4,6 designation on Core processors.  A Xeon E3 without a version is a Sandy Bridge, a v2 is an Ivy Bridge, v3 is Haswell, and v5 is Skylake.

 

To me the main reason to go with an E3 Xeon is ECC RAM plus the additional server features typically found on a server class board (IPMI, dual LAN, etc).  If ECC is not important to you (or you just want to reuse your existing DDR3 RAM) then a Haswell Core i5/7 (4xxx series) should be fine.  A Haswell E3 Xeon (v3) will probably accept your existing DDR3 RAM as well, allowing you to upgrade to ECC in the future - check the specs.

 

DDR4 is faster than DDR3 but I'm not sure how much faster without the upgraded memory architecture of Skylake CPUs and chipsets.

 

Aside from cost, a disadvantage of the E5 chips is that they're more power hungry (and need good cooling as a result).  Also some of the E5's you linked are older Sandy Bridge chips which are less power efficient than Haswell and Skylake.  If you want the additional horsepower then who cares?  But some people are sensitive to that.

 

Some Xeon's have integrated graphics and some don't - keep an eye on that since the motherboard will need onboard graphics (or you'll need a card) if you don't get a chip with integrated graphics.

 

If you just want to handle Plex and dual parity a high end Core i5/7 or E3 Xeon is probably all you need.  My personal preference is for a Haswell chip over Sandy Bridge.  There are some great deals on Sandy Bridge E5s (including eBay, check threads for E5-2670 chips like this) if you want some real grunt, though.

 

Thanks, a lot of this was extremely helpful.  The

 

Would you worry about getting a used E5 chip off Ebay, knowing it was in a server but not knowing what it's real duty was and how long it was in service?  How often to chips actually burn out or fail?

Many of them are from China, and that turns up the concern a bit for me.  There are a handful of sellers that were stateside and the cost differences weren't substantial.

 

The 2660 or 2670 are both probably more than I need, but at the Ebay prices, I come out cheaper than a new E3 or i7.

 

 

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In reading through the RC4 thread, this post:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=51308.msg492124#msg492124

 

and the second link in this post:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=51308.msg491919#msg491919

 

Are pretty interesting.  In short, the dual parity CPU calculations are pretty intensive and newer chips (Haswell through Skylake) are better at it due to their support of the AVX2 instruction set.  This appears more relevant for lower end chips - if you have enough horsepower in an older chip you can probably just power through.

 

I've had good luck buying CPUs and SATA controllers on eBay but I prefer working US server/workstation pulls over China.

 

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Thanks, again great information.  So,  here is a revised option:

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Xeon-E3-1270V3-3-5-GHz-Quad-Core-CM8064601467101-SR151-Processor-/272298068980?hash=item3f663acbf4:g:sbIAAOSwV0RXtUts  9675 passmarks

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157404

 

Probably 8 or 16 GB Kensingon ECC Ram

 

Does anyone know anything about that board?  Compatible with unRaid?

 

Do you think it would be better to get a 9600 passmark E3  v3 rather than a E5 v1 that gets 11,500 or 12,500 passmarks?

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I've seen that board (or the smaller ITX version) used a number of times for unRAID.  The ASRock and Supermicro motherboards are the ones most commonly used for E3 Xeons.

 

Personally I'd go with the newer E3 over the older E5 unless you are sure you want the additional couple of thousand Passmarks.  Since you only want to transcode 1 or 2 streams and don't plan any heavy VM usage an E3 is probably more than fine.  A bunch of people are grabbing cheap E5's because they just want horsepower to spare, though.

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OK, this one just seems to good go be true.

 

It is from China but still seems to good to be true.  Seller has 99.1% positive feedback with a score near 60K

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/351733829116?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

 

am i missing something in the specs?  same as this right?

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1UH3Z95751&cm_re=e5_2670_v3-_-19-117-475-_-Product

 

Much more than i need but its no more expensive than the E3.    Hey would this make a good desktop?  :)

 

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Its an engineering sample.  IE:  It may (or may not) have issues in its microcode, stability, mobo compatibility, etc.  Think of it as a beta or RC chip.  That's why they're cheap, because most people don't want to have to deal with the issues (if any) on them.

 

Also probably technically illegal to sell, as AFAIK they remain the property of Intel

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Its an engineering sample.  IE:  It may (or may not) have issues in its microcode, stability, mobo compatibility, etc.  Think of it as a beta or RC chip.  That's why they're cheap, because most people don't want to have to deal with the issues (if any) on them.

 

Also probably technically illegal to sell, as AFAIK they remain the property of Intel

 

Is that what the ES designation in the ad means?  Engineering Sample?  That will help me avoid them in the future.  Thanks.

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OK so I'm asking this from a general lack of knowledge about what the intel model numbers mean.  This was copied from the passmark site.  I'm just looking at E3 V3 or better.  It would seem the higher the processor number, version and frequency the faster the passmark rating would be, but it's obviously not always that way. 

1246 v3 @ 3.50 is faster than a 1275 V3 or 1270 V5.  There are other similar examples in this list.  What am i missing here?  Is passmarks really the best way to know which will perform better?  Should i go with that?

 

Intel Xeon E3-1271 v3 @ 3.60GHz 9,948

Intel Xeon E3-1246 v3 @ 3.50GHz 9,902

Intel Xeon E3-1270 v5 @ 3.60GHz 9,860

Intel Xeon E3-1270 v3 @ 3.50GHz 9,826

Intel Xeon E3-1275 v3 @ 3.50GHz 9,815

Intel Xeon E3-1240 v3 @ 3.40GHz 9,688

Intel Xeon E5-1620 v3 @ 3.50GHz 9,671

Intel Xeon E5-2637 v4 @ 3.50GHz 9,665

Intel Xeon E3-1280 v3 @ 3.60GHz 9,664

Intel Xeon E3-1231 v3 @ 3.40GHz 9,613

Intel Xeon E3-1230 v5 @ 3.40GHz 9,569

Intel Xeon E3-1245 v3 @ 3.40GHz 9,532

 

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All benchmarks are artificial and can only approximate real world performance.  Also, you shouldn't try to compare by model number/GHz E3 and E5 chips, or v3 and v5 chips - performance varies by generation.  That said, you're right - the Passmark numbers don't line up the way a person would reasonably expect.  I've never been able to fully explain it.

 

Don't stress over it, there are more important things to consider.  First, some support onboard video and some don't.  Depending on the motherboard you get that's important.  Second, you can't buy all these at retail.  At any given point in time, I'd just look for the best deal you can get.  You really aren't going to notice the difference between 9,600 Passmarks and 9,800 Passmarks.

 

If I were getting a new v3 E3 Xeon today I'd get the 1241 if I didn't need onboard video or the 1246 if did.  They've got great Passmark scores and are available for purchase on Amazon and NewEgg, and cost a fair amount less than the 1271 and 1276.  The 1241 and 1246 also have a lot better Passmark scores than the 1220 and 1226 so it's worth the extra $30.  That's about all you can buy right now - the other models are no longer available so they don't matter.

 

If you're buying on eBay, maybe use some kind of Passmark/$$$ ratio?

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All benchmarks are artificial and can only approximate real world performance.  Also, you shouldn't try to compare by model number/GHz E3 and E5 chips, or v3 and v5 chips - performance varies by generation.  That said, you're right - the Passmark numbers don't line up the way a person would reasonably expect.  I've never been able to fully explain it.

 

Don't stress over it, there are more important things to consider.  First, some support onboard video and some don't.  Depending on the motherboard you get that's important.  Second, you can't buy all these at retail.  At any given point in time, I'd just look for the best deal you can get.  You really aren't going to notice the difference between 9,600 Passmarks and 9,800 Passmarks.

 

If I were getting a new v3 E3 Xeon today I'd get the 1241 if I didn't need onboard video or the 1246 if did.  They've got great Passmark scores and are available for purchase on Amazon and NewEgg, and cost a fair amount less than the 1271 and 1276.  The 1241 and 1246 also have a lot better Passmark scores than the 1220 and 1226 so it's worth the extra $30.  That's about all you can buy right now - the other models are no longer available so they don't matter.

 

If you're buying on eBay, maybe use some kind of Passmark/$$$ ratio?

 

Thanks for this.  I think that pulled the rest together for me.  I had seen the 1246's on Ebay but hadn't really looked on NewEgg for them and there is only about $40 difference.  That being said, here is where I think i'm landing.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157404&ignorebbr=1

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239370&ignorebbr=1

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117318&ignorebbr=1

 

I'll dig around for the best pricing but sometime in the next few weeks I'll be placing that order.

 

Thanks for the help.

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Thanks for this.  I think that pulled the rest together for me.  I had seen the 1246's on Ebay but hadn't really looked on NewEgg for them and there is only about $40 difference.  That being said, here is where I think i'm landing.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157404&ignorebbr=1

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239370&ignorebbr=1

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117318&ignorebbr=1

 

I'll dig around for the best pricing but sometime in the next few weeks I'll be placing that order.

 

Thanks for the help.

 

The board above says this ...

Onboard Video Chipset

Aspeed AST2300, 16MB

 

I dont need anything special for unRaid, so no reason not to get a 1241 chip instead of the 1246, correct?

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Yep, you should be able to use either chip on that board.  Note that the board requires the newer P2.10 BIOS for both chips.  ASRock is also known for being a little picky about the ECC RAM it supports but I believe you've picked one of the ones that are on the HCL.

 

The memory did check out against their list.  I'm thinking 16 GB is plenty for unraid and Plex / transcoding, but really dont have any experience with on the fly transcoding.  How much headroom will I have?  I always want to allow for some future growth.  Thats a total shot in the dark as 6 months ago I had no plans to be running Plex.  It's about $88 for 16 GB so doubling it for $88 more.  32 seems overkill though.  Any thoughts?

 

I can't think all you guys enough for the advice, it's been a learning experience jumping into server grade equipment. 

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16GB is more than enough for unRAID + Plex.

 

Plex is CPU intensive and not very RAM heavy.. for example I run the usual media dockers and plex, as well as a plex client VM as well as an ubuntu 16.04 test VM on my 8GB without issues.

 

My RAM utilization hovers around 80% when everything is on.

 

If saving some money and going with 8GB would net you a faster processor that's the direction I'd take based on your usage requirements.

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I agree, 16GB of RAM is a good spot to target.  Plex also does a lot of I/O, transcoding ahead and writing the information to your cache drive.  There's a thread about transcoding to a RAM disk but I think you'll find transcoding to an SSD is more than fast enough.

 

Now i'm getting a little ahead of myself but since you mentioned this.  I don't have a cache disk set up in unRaid, so I'm guessing I will need to.  A couple questions come to mind:

 

- Cache drives normally write to the array eventually, so does the transcoding operation prevent that from happening?

- How many streams can transcode to the same drive at the same time, assuming i use a SSD?  How big does it need to be? 

 

OK, i'm asking myself things I haven't attempted to read up on yet so feel free to tell me to read the docs first, but I couldn't help myself ;)

 

 

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Ah, I didn't realize the SSDs in your signature were part of the array.

 

Yes, the cache drive has become the defacto "application drive" under unRAID 6.  The standard practice is to create a cache-only user share ("Use cache disk" - "Only") called appdata.  The docker image goes in appdata, as does the data directories for any dockers you create like Plex.  Because the share is cache-only it will never be moved to the array.

 

Get the Community Applications plugin to install your dockers and setup a periodic backup of them to the array.

 

You might want to consider buying a new data drive and migrating the data on those SSDs to it so the 500 can be used as your cache drive.  500 is overkill for most purposes as a cache drive, but since SSDs aren't officially supported in the array it's worth considering.  As a point of reference my Docker image is 20GB, my smallish Plex library is less than 10GB, and other Dockers a few GB.  In theory a 60GB SSD could function as your cache drive but I wouldn't go with less than 120GB and 240GB is the standard recommendation these days.  I haven't tried to max out the number of transcoding streams a drive can handle but I'm quite sure the E3 Xeon will be the gating factor, not a modern SSD.

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I agree, 16GB of RAM is a good spot to target.  Plex also does a lot of I/O, transcoding ahead and writing the information to your cache drive.  There's a thread about transcoding to a RAM disk but I think you'll find transcoding to an SSD is more than fast enough.

 

Now i'm getting a little ahead of myself but since you mentioned this.  I don't have a cache disk set up in unRaid, so I'm guessing I will need to.  A couple questions come to mind:

 

- Cache drives normally write to the array eventually, so does the transcoding operation prevent that from happening?

- How many streams can transcode to the same drive at the same time, assuming i use a SSD?  How big does it need to be? 

 

OK, i'm asking myself things I haven't attempted to read up on yet so feel free to tell me to read the docs first, but I couldn't help myself ;)

 

You'll reach the limit of the CPU before the cache drive becomes overburden with transcodes. With an SSD this is a fact, with a regular spinner, probably still true (I use a 1TB SSHD laptop drive as cache, never an issue).

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