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Synology Transcoding Support


HawkXP71

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HawkXP71

I was wondering. Is there a table of "these work great" synology boxes?  Or more to the point, is there a table of These CPUS from synology work great, fair or dont work for transcoding/computation?

I'm in the process of investigation for an upgrade to my 918+517 and buying a system with more bays to start with.

Do the AMD Ryzen V1500B CPU models have a GPU that can handle the transcoding?  What about the Xeon?  The AMD site lists a GPU, the intel site does not for the Xeon processors Synology uses.

If "money were no object" (ok, it is, but Id rather pay a bit more upfront now, than be stuck with a capacity issue in the future) which system would people buy?



 

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GrimReaper
14 minutes ago, HawkXP71 said:

I was wondering. Is there a table of "these work great" synology boxes?  Or more to the point, is there a table of These CPUS from synology work great, fair or dont work for transcoding/computation?

Nope. You can use table of general CPU comparison. 

 

14 minutes ago, HawkXP71 said:

Do the AMD Ryzen V1500B CPU models have a GPU that can handle the transcoding?  What about the Xeon?  The AMD site lists a GPU, the intel site does not for the Xeon processors Synology uses.

How many concurrent transcodes you have in mind? And of which kind? Xeons generally don't have iGPUs, at least those that Synology uses that I know of. 

14 minutes ago, HawkXP71 said:

If "money were no object" (ok, it is, but Id rather pay a bit more upfront now, than be stuck with a capacity issue in the future) which system would people buy?

I'd go with QNAP, as you can get some of the QS-enabled i3/i5/i7 Intels, which would be way better for intended purpose that anything Synology has to offer with either AMD or Xeon. 

Anyway, @cayars or @FrostBytemight have some more insight. 

Edited by GrimReaper
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HawkXP71
Just now, GrimReaper said:

Nope. You can use table of general CPU comparison. 

 

How many concurrent transcodes you have in mind? And of which kind? Xeons generally don't have iGPUs, at least those that Synology uses that I know of. 

I'd go with QNAP, as you can get some of the QS-enabled i3/i5/i7 Intels, which would be way better for intended purpose that anything Synology has to offer with either AMD or Xeon. 

I was afraid someone would say QNap.. Only because I love the synology DSM system as a whole, and the QNap OS I found lacking (had one 3 years ago and returned it for my 918)

But an i7 would be great.  

Looking at the Synology CPU list, the Ryzen should be good to go though? 

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GrimReaper
1 minute ago, HawkXP71 said:

I was afraid someone would say QNap.. Only because I love the synology DSM system as a whole, and the QNap OS I found lacking (had one 3 years ago and returned it for my 918)

But an i7 would be great.  

Looking at the Synology CPU list, the Ryzen should be good to go though? 

It probably would, again, depending on the number of transcodes you'd need. And it still doesn't hold a handle to QS-enabled Intel CPU.

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HawkXP71
Just now, GrimReaper said:

It probably would, again, depending on the number of transcodes you'd need. And it still doesn't hold a handle to QS-enabled Intel CPU.

Thanks.  

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FrostByte

If you want Synology and you need to transcode a lot then you probably want to stay away from the Ryzens as mentioned they don't have a GPU and you won't get hardware transcoding/va-api 

What kind of CPU does my Synology NAS have? - Synology Knowledge Center

You can search any of the Intel chips here.  I've already searched the one found in the 920+ which has a UHD rated GPU.  Cayars may be able to reflect on transcoding as this is what he has

Intel Celeron Processor J4125 4M Cache up to 2.70 GHz Product Specifications

I went with a Ryzen because everything I got direct plays and I wanted the faster overall CPU and the extra bays

Intel Celeron J4125 @ 2.00GHz vs AMD Ryzen Embedded V1500B [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software

 

 

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HawkXP71
10 minutes ago, FrostByte said:

If you want Synology and you need to transcode a lot then you probably want to stay away from the Ryzens as mentioned they don't have a GPU and you won't get hardware transcoding/va-api 

What kind of CPU does my Synology NAS have? - Synology Knowledge Center

You can search any of the Intel chips here.  I've already searched the one found in the 920+ which has a UHD rated GPU.  Cayars may be able to reflect on transcoding as this is what he has

Intel Celeron Processor J4125 4M Cache up to 2.70 GHz Product Specifications

I went with a Ryzen because everything I got direct plays and I wanted the faster overall CPU and the extra bays

Intel Celeron J4125 @ 2.00GHz vs AMD Ryzen Embedded V1500B [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software

 

 

Thanks.. I finally found the proper location of the AMD table, the v1500B doesnt have a GPU ...  Thanks

Beyond transcoding, i would think a faster GPU will also help with any call to ffmpeg, correct? Including BIF generation, image extraction etc etc. Is that correct?

The faster CPU improvement would definitely be a huge boon for me for non emby functionality.
 

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FrostByte

Yes, non GPU related processes like bif generation, image loading, etc will benefit from more CPU power. 

I would have probably gone Qnap myself, but I prefer (or am used to) DSM over Qnap's OS

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HawkXP71
3 minutes ago, FrostByte said:

Yes, non GPU related processes like bif generation, image loading, etc will benefit from more CPU power. 

I would have probably gone Qnap myself, but I prefer (or am used to) DSM over Qnap's OS

I would think that BIF generation and image manipulation would also be faster if they used the GPU, or is it a matter that the embedded processors only really supply encoding support not image manipulation

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FrostByte
4 minutes ago, HawkXP71 said:

I would think that BIF generation and image manipulation would also be faster if they used the GPU, or is it a matter that the embedded processors only really supply encoding support not image manipulation

Not the way softworkz is doing it I guess.  He made a comment about it in the below link saying it was pointless and says somewhere else he went into further explanation of how it works

 

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HawkXP71
1 minute ago, FrostByte said:

Not the way softworkz is doing it I guess.  He made a comment about it in the below link saying it was pointless and says somewhere else he went into further explanation of how it works

 

Thanks for the info...

95% of my video is onto a laptop or TV, so while transcoding is necessary, it may be worth the hit to get the faster CPU.

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FrostByte

cayars has a good thread in here also talking about the benefits of adding extra memory, the two m2 drives and a SSD (if you can spare a slot)

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HawkXP71
6 minutes ago, FrostByte said:

cayars has a good thread in here also talking about the benefits of adding extra memory, the two m2 drives and a SSD (if you can spare a slot)

Interesting.. Ill take a look and try to find it

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The two NVMe PCIe M.2 boards actually are the SSD so you don't have to give up a drive bay. I picked up two 1Gb M.2s and have them configured for read/write caching.

Sorry gonna have a mini rant :)

I will say however if it wasn't for me doing support here in the forums I would never buy a Synology for personal use as a media server.  The Synology boxes are both a blessing and a curse at times.  If you know nothing about Linux type system I'm sure it's a great platform and even a pretty good introduction to Linux type OSes in general but if you know Linux well these boxes make life hard.

They use a stripped down version of Debian Linux with much of the original Linux code removed or replaced which makes it hard to install typical Linux software. You can sometimes work around this using docker but that doesn't always work. The consumer models have no slots available for GPU, no network upgrades above the 2 built in 1Gb Ethernet ports and have to settle for a little Celeron CPU. I picked up the 920+ as it was the best in that size class as the Celeron at least has QuickSync.  But after replacing all the drives (now using 18TBs) I'd need to add the 517 expansion chassis to expand past the 4 drive bays in it already.

The DX517 is going to cost about $521 from a quick Amazon check compared to another brand new 920+ for $550. Pricing doesn't make sense. Chassis with 5 bays for about the same price as full blown NAS with OS and another CPU minus 1 bay.  It would be dumb IMHO to purchase a new DS517 for expansion.  You should never mix the 4 internal drives and the 5 external chassis drives as one volume as it's asking for trouble.  If the sata cable came loose, got knocked out you have a mixed volume that goes into repair mode and could cause loss of data.  With two separate volumes the internal is fine while the external are offline.  Once the cable is "fixed" the drives would be recognized again and all is well. So if you need to have two volumes anyway you might as well have two full boxes and mount the file systems together.  The other "issue" is that the NVMe cache is only good for use with the internal drives. Regardless these consumer boxes are limited to a grand total of 2Gb networking when bonded.  I used to be able to plug a 10Gb or 5Gb USB to Ethernet adapter in to one of the USB3 ports with DSM6 and it would work.  On DSM 7 they removed many USB3 drivers and using 3rd party drivers if flakey.

I don't really mean to criticize these NAS boxes but they really aren't an ideal match for our media needs (besides storage). Qnap on the other hand has some boxes with i3, i5 & i7 CPUs as well as slots for a GPU and comes with better networking ports (up to 10Gb) as well so likely a far better choice with the right model.

Synology has some amazing software for business users with it's "Drive" functionality, it's backup software and other business oriented features. We just aren't the market they are really designed for.

To be honest, most people with the consumer NAS boxes would likely be better off going to their local Walmart and buying the first computer they see with an i5 or better bringing it home and installing Open Media Vault 6 on it.  Now they have a web driven NAS interface based on a true Linux distribution on hardware with a much better CPU and have a PCI slot or two open for a GPU if needed. That would be roughly the same price or cheaper! That's actually pretty true if you think about it. 

Another thing that's very frustrating to me is that I have a few external enclosures like these: https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-eSATA-8-Bay-Hot-Swap-Enclosure/dp/B00MN4CY1Y?th=1 which are 8 bay and hot swappable. From a functional standpoint they serve the same function as a DX517 with 3 additional drives. If I plug one into my Synology 920+ via eSATA I get nothing. I have probably 6 to 12 eSata drives and only 1 works and it's a single drive.  If I use the USB3 connection I get all 8 drives attached. The eSATA they use I'm guessing does not include a multiplier.  They instead probably have that functionality in the DS517 instead.

Rant over now. :)

Depending on your need to upgrade you have many options besides a typical NAS.  If transcoding was the reason it's hard to top a normal computer with GPU but if you wanted a small form factor you could look into NUCs or Tiny Gaming PCs like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBbiMmxGS3w  From about $400 to $600 would get you i7 to i9 with a Nvidia GTX 1050 to GTX 1650.  You don't need to go crazy but one fast NVMe for boot/system/Transcoding area would be great.  That's about the same price as a 920+ but 5 to 10 times faster where it counts for transcoding.

If you need storage you can add via SATA or USB3 an external drive bay like I have on one of these https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-SATA-Hard-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B078YQHWYW/ref=psdc_160354011_t3_B005GYDMYG for 4 drives using USB at 10GB transfer rates which is double the old USB3 rates.  You could actually add a couple of them to a gaming PC like that. You would wipe the OS on the tiny gaming PC and install an OS like Open Media Vault and have a really nice NAS from a functional standpoint.

Instead of that type of HDD Enclosure you could use https://www.amazon.com/TerraMaster-External-Enclosure-Support-Diskless/dp/B005IOLBT2/ref=psdc_160354011_t4_B005GYDMYG?th=1 a Terramaster 5 bay unit with hardware RAID for about $260.  This to me would be far better then the DX517 at half the cost, same amount of drive bays and will be faster as well. The Synology will just see 1 drive, not 5 if using RAID.  This of course is DAS storage but they also make a 4 bay NAS for about the same price (half of Synology).

There are many options available from DIY to buy and install that are cheaper and likely a better solution.  Don't be afraid to look at other brand name NAS or even a DIY approach.

 

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FrostByte

I thought Synology restricted the m2 drives so they could only be used for system cache.  So you can't point your transcode, etc folders to them without using one of the ways to get around it.

But agree, there are better solutions for those who don't mind DIY

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