New Build - 5900x vs 12600k

[crembz 1]

I'm trying to decide between two options ... both of which I own. I will be selling whichever I don't end up using.

My old system was an 8700k which I ran on unraid and emby premier in a container. Ran fine for the most part with 8xdata drives, 2 cache nvme drives and a usb3 SSD unassigned drive. HW acceleration was not an issue on the server although there was some weirdness when playing hevc on android tvs where the server seemed to direct play to the client ... which wouldn't play the files, stuttering for 60 seconds before the server would error out and switch to transcoding.

So out of the two options, which would be a better linux based option for running a nas with emby in a container? I'll also be running about 7 other containers, and several virtual machines. I'm guessing I'd need to buy a GPU for the 5900x to offload transcodes (probably a gtx1650) but I figure the 12600k is ready to go. On the flipside, the 5900x has more cores and has much better multithreaded capabilities.

Also how does evenc stack up to quicksync for the purposes of transcoding media?

[GrimReaper 3292]

I reckon you'll hardly get a definitive answer there, as that is highly dependent on one's usage-case and not all setups works in all scenarios, especially not knowing what other containers/VMs your gonna run and how much multi-threading capabilities you actually need.

From pure media server perspective transcoding-wise, I reckon latest-gen QSV-enabled Intel CPU takes an easy win over an AMD/GPU combo and has an upside of not needing a discreet GPU to begin with. Then again, having a discreet GPU does give some future-proofing as you can always swap for something beefier. I know @rbjtech has been getting some wild results with his 12700 (same UHD 770 as in 12600) that would likely eat that GTX 1650 for breakfast, need a minute to find that thread - or he might jump-in and offer his insight (and spare me roaming through the topics ). Then again, have absolutely no idea about your other requirements.

Edit: Well, that went faster than I thought:

 

 

 

Edited March 17, 2022 by GrimReaper
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[crembz 1]

Thanks for that. I'll probably end up either running unraid or go with a manual build using a drive pooling tech (undecided, mergerfs maybe). As for VMs, they'll be mainly labs I'll be tearing up and down to test different cloud management. Containers will be a mixture of virtualised network apps (Router, DNS, Reverse Proxy etc) and some download and media indexing systems. I'll probably only ever need 3-4 streams at a time (2 local, 2 remote) and it's really only the 4k HDR stuff that ends up transcoded to 1080p SDR. so max 2 of those concurrently. I'm thinking the CPU could possibly do that in SW.

The other option of course is to use clients that can handle 4kHDR and direct play them and remove the requirement . Nvidia shield maybe?

[rbjtech 4260]

The 8700K is still a very capable processor - and has a UHD630 iGPU - also very capable.

The real question is what is bottlenecking your current system  ?

Nobody should be transcoding 4K unless they really need to - so the option to Direct Play on clients should be your #1 solution imo.

If you are not trancoding, then the need for GPU and CPU becomes largely irrelevant as well.

The reason I upgraded to a 12700K was because my i5 750 (yes really, 1st Gen) was limited on the Mobo to 16Gbyte - and I needed more memory for more VM's.   But the i5 ran multiple VM's in the limited memory I had, and ran emby streaming multiple 4K Remux's perfectly fine - but of course no transcoding.

 

[crembz 1]

The # of cpu cores were a real bottleneck running unraid, especially when writing large amounts of data and parity checking. During those times the cpu would be hitting 60-80% usage on an 8600k leaving very little resource for running anything else. Specifically for emby this would result in playback issues even when direct playing. 

I'd also run into issues with cpu contention with some heavier vms or containers especially if running any compression/decompression tasks

One solution could be to separate the nas and the virtual host but I would rather have one box than two.

I was looking at a shield tv maybe to offload transcoding to the client, my TV's are 1080p.