Minor Upgrade or full overhaul - Xeon E5-1607v3 - 3-4 simultaneous

[hooraah 5]

My current emby server has been working extremely reliably and I've been very happy with that.  Its running on a Xeon E5-1607 v3 which is the equivalent of about an I5-3570 (4 cores, 4 threads, 3ghz).  It also has a Quadro K620 GPU.

When I first set this server up (I want to say 2018 or so) I had some trouble with GPU accelerated transcoding and it just didn't work.  I gave up and went back to software transcoding which has been fine for the most part since I have at most 3-4 concurrent users and usually only have to transcode 1-2.  I don't have a lot of 4K H265 yet, but its been increasing lately.  My family doesn't complain much so I don't know if its really been working well or if they just don't want to bother me.

I randomly saw on ebay that I can get an E5-1650 v3 CPU for about $35 and drop it in for a significant performance improvement (6 cores + a nice CPU clock boost).  It seems like a win because I can just drop it in and go, no configuration needed and no need to move to a new platform.  Thinking about it more though I wonder if I should make the switch to a GPU accelerated platform, which means either moving to a new intel board for quicksync or maybe putting in a new GPU.

Putting in a 6 core CPU would basically be kicking the can down the road.  Getting my current K620 or other GPU working for hardware transcode would be a minimal help (cant do 265) but might take enough load off to kick the can a little further.  I realize this is a subjective question, but at this point, with my use case, would you all stretch it or move to a new platform now?  Re-doing all of my libraries and users, plus the fact that my current server is super stable is what has me not wanting to move to a new platform, but it might be time.

[Luke 37066]

@Gilgamesh_48 may have some tips.

[Gilgamesh_48 943]

5 hours ago, Luke said:

@Gilgamesh_48 may have some tips.

The only contribution I can make is that it seems that the suggested upgrade seems pretty good. However I only support one user and almost never have more than one stream active so, once a reasonable level is reached, there is very little I have explored for increased power.

But I can make one suggestion: I read that "transcoding" is a concern and I would strongly suggest getting everything in a codec/container combo that direct plays. That is defer transcoding to a time/machine where it will not interfere with normal operations and so that you only need to do it once for each piece of media.

Also, if you choose a "new" platform it is much faster to do an initial scan if you have chosen to store your images and metadata alongside your media. It still takes time if your library is large but it takes less time if the data is stored with the media.
One suggestion, if you choose a new machine, is that you should be sure that on initial setup you configure the libraries before you allow any scanning. That is turn on the advanced tab during first setup and be sure to set your libraries so that everything is stored with the media.

A faster computer is almost always better than a slower one so an upgrade is almost always a good thing.

[hooraah 5]

I understand your point about pre-transcoding files into a more suitable format, but it would have to be an automatic process.  I don't put that much time into manually managing the server and the library.  I (or sometimes friends/family) dump the files into the library and thats about it.

Digging into it a little further yesterday, I looked at a couple of the 4K HEVC files I have and tried transcoding on the fly.  I'm right at the limit of the CPU for one stream on a 15mbit file.  I guess I never noticed how close to the ceiling I was since all of the stuff in the house can direct play these and I only had a few.  That said, they are becoming more common.

I think my first venture is going to be in trying to use the GPU to at least do the H.264 encode to take a little load off.  Like I said, back when I set things up it didn't work, but doing a little research it seems that may have been caused by a remote desktop limitation to which there is a solution for now.  Then I'm going to go forward with the 6 core CPU and that should give me enough overhead for at least one 4K HEVC high bitrate transcode.  

We'll see how long this setup lasts.

[CharlieMurphy 73]

I have a a server running on "Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1650 0 @ 3.20GHz."  I avoid transcoding HEVC entirely on it. h264 is fine for many at a time but the amount of resources it takes this old 6-core to transcode HEVC is not even close to practical. I only direct play HEVC because it's like mining crypto just to watch a movie on this thing.

I'm waiting a little longer for GPU prices to keep falling and I plan to get a GTX 2050 or something like that to transcode HEVC with NVENC. I thought about using QS on a 12th gen Intel because people say QS does just fine now, but if you compare the performance it seems NVENC still runs circles around QS. Another reason is that when the CPU is loaded with h264 transcodes I'm seeing some "iowait". I suspect that high CPU usage is holding up the storage controller (also on CPU I think) or something, which maybe could be alleviated by offloading the h264 transcodes to a GPU.

The extra 2 cores will be great but I still don't recommend software transcoding HEVC.

[pir8radio 1292]

If you get bored, i did a test a long time ago, (still using this server) and want to read through this thread..    or just start here for the test result.   

 

[hooraah 5]

15 hours ago, CharlieMurphy said:

I'm waiting a little longer for GPU prices to keep falling and I plan to get a GTX 2050 or something like that to transcode HEVC with NVENC. 

I hear you.  I could go with a GPU but with elevated prices it might be better to just do a 12th gen build.  The emby server is on a Dell Precision chassis, which is nice, but not easy to swap out motherboard/CPU.  So I'd have to do a totally new build and installation, then setup all of my users again.  So then Im back around to kicking the can down the road with a new CPU setup to get me a little more life and maybe in a year I can throw a GPU in.  Its fairly rare that someone is transcoding a 4K movie but like I said that could change in the future.

In the meantime, I purchased the 6 core CPU and it should be here mid-next week.  Hopefully I can get it installed and tested soon.  It is a lot of processor power for just one transcode, but if I can cover the possibility of one, maybe 2 4K transcodes and keep the server from choking for regular 1080P direct play users I will be happy for the foreseeable future.

 

[hooraah 5]

15 hours ago, pir8radio said:

If you get bored, i did a test a long time ago, (still using this server) and want to read through this thread..    or just start here for the test result.   

Thats some serious load there.  I'd love to be able to stress my system like that someday if I ever hosted on something with a gigabit upload but right now I'm limited to 15mbps outbound so I keep my userbase to around 2-4 concurrent streams.

[hooraah 5]

6 core CPU installed.  Went from transcoding at 23fps for one reference 4K HDR 10bit 15mbit file to 40-60fps transcoding the same file.  I have yet to try transcoding something really high like 25mbit 4K but I think this is a good setup for now.