Is it worth the upgrade?

[Crowleyisking 8]

Hey everyone

I was wondering if i could get some input on this. So i find myself with a bit of spare cash and was thinking of updating my Server machine.

Im currently using an Alienware Alpha R2 - Intel i5 6400T, 16GB of Ram, Nvidia GTX 960 and 256gb SSD for the OS.

Running Windows 10 Pro and this machine is only used to run emby.

 

I was looking at this for £300

Dell OptiPlex 3000 Series
SPECS:
CPU: Intel Core i5 12500 (6 Cores / 6 Threads @ 2.00Ghz)
RAM: 16GB Kingston DDR4 - 3200Mhz
STORAGE: 256GB M.2 SSD
OS: Genuine Windows 11 PRO x64 Activated

CONDITION:

Like New, has only been used when upgrading RAM to 16GB.

Comes with a brand new power cable & Dell keyboard/mouse set.

 

I basically just after a bit of future proofing and potentially having a more power efficient system, especially with the cost of everything going up. Most of my family who use my server have decent client devices but a few of them do end up transcoding the 4K content i have, so would the above machine be a better invetment than my current machine?

I dont want to mess around with alternative OS etc, as thats out of my knowledge base lol. Id appreciate any insights or thoughts on moving to the Optiplex?

 

Thanks 

 

[rbjtech 4919]

Are you upgrading for a reason ?

The 12500 will make a VERY nice emby server with QuickSync, but unless you need all that transcoding power for 4K, then it won't be that much of an upgrade over the 6500 in terms of serving untranscoded video for example.    It will use a lot less power though..

[Crowleyisking 8]

Well, as i said, i have some spare cash and was thinking i can spend it on an upgrade. 

At most i need 3-4 4K transcodes Max, its rare to have that many simultaneous transcodes, but id rather have the capabilities if needed.

More importantly is reducing the energy usage if i can, as it is running 24/7.

[rbjtech 4919]

21 minutes ago, Crowleyisking said:

Well, as i said, i have some spare cash and was thinking i can spend it on an upgrade. 

At most i need 3-4 4K transcodes Max, its rare to have that many simultaneous transcodes, but id rather have the capabilities if needed.

More importantly is reducing the energy usage if i can, as it is running 24/7.

So the TDP's of the cpu's are actually better on the laptop - as that's a mobile cpu - 35W vs 65W for the 12500 - but then you have the GTX960 in the laptop - which will be very power hungry (~80-120W) vs built in on the 12500.

Remember at idle states (which is what a server will be for the majority of the time), then power falls to much lower levels anyway (the cpu downclocks).

If it's just for power savings - then I would not bother - but if you need the extra transcoding performance - then it's a good upgrade.

[Crowleyisking 8]

1 minute ago, rbjtech said:

So the TDP's of the cpu's are actually better on the laptop - as that's a mobile cpu - 35W vs 65W for the 12500 - but then you have the GTX960 in the laptop - which will be very power hungry (~80-120W) vs built in on the 12500.

Remember at idle states (which is what a server will be for the majority of the time), then power falls to much lower levels anyway (the cpu downclocks).

If it's just for power savings - then I would not bother - but if you need the extra transcoding performance - then it's a good upgrade.

Well its a bit of both. Ive got the GTX set to do all of the transcoding at the minute. Would i see any performance boost with the newer 12500 doing the work with Quicksync over the GTX?

[rbjtech 4919]

7 minutes ago, Crowleyisking said:

Well its a bit of both. Ive got the GTX set to do all of the transcoding at the minute. Would i see any performance boost with the newer 12500 doing the work with Quicksync over the GTX?

yes - it will be a huge improvement.  You may get 1-2 x 4k streams with the GTX ? - you'll get 8-10 x 4k streams with the 12500/UHD 770 igpu - this is the current top end iGPU - the same one used in the 13900 believe it or not ..

[Crowleyisking 8]

4 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

yes - it will be a huge improvement.  You may get 1-2 x 4k streams with the GTX ? - you'll get 8-10 x 4k streams with the 12500/UHD 770 igpu - this is the current top end iGPU - the same one used in the 13900 believe it or not ..

Yeah, thats a massive improvement lol. What about its actual ability to process content more effectively? 

[rbjtech 4919]

15 minutes ago, Crowleyisking said:

Yeah, thats a massive improvement lol. What about its actual ability to process content more effectively? 

the UHD770 will have AV1 decode, h265 10bit etc - the 960 will have none or limited feature sets for this...  and all at a fraction of the power ..

It's not really a fair comparison - the 960 was release in 2015, the UHD was released in 2021/22

Edited January 30, 2023 by rbjtech

[Crowleyisking 8]

49 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

the UHD770 will have AV1 decode, h265 10bit etc - the 960 will have none or limited feature sets for this...  and all at a fraction of the power ..

It's not really a fair comparison - the 960 was release in 2015, the UHD was released in 2021/22

Thats perfect, thanks for your replies to this and all of your advice. Much appreciated

[lightsout 156]

On 1/30/2023 at 6:29 AM, rbjtech said:

yes - it will be a huge improvement.  You may get 1-2 x 4k streams with the GTX ? - you'll get 8-10 x 4k streams with the 12500/UHD 770 igpu - this is the current top end iGPU - the same one used in the 13900 believe it or not ..

Is it your experience that you have to get an i5 to get the 770? I didn't see it in any cheaper chips.

[TMCsw 165]

See: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/graphics/219449/intel-uhd-graphics-770.html

[rbjtech 4919]

16 hours ago, lightsout said:

Is it your experience that you have to get an i5 to get the 770? I didn't see it in any cheaper chips.

To get a 770 yes, but the 710 in the i3 (12/13100) still have the same ASICS so is only slightly behind the 770 in terms of encoding/decoding performance due to it's lower clock.  From a 3d (games) perspective, there is a big difference though as it has less shaders - not that you should be using the uhd for games anyway ..

 

[lightsout 156]

4 hours ago, rbjtech said:

To get a 770 yes, but the 710 in the i3 (12/13100) still have the same ASICS so is only slightly behind the 770 in terms of encoding/decoding performance due to it's lower clock.  From a 3d (games) perspective, there is a big difference though as it has less shaders - not that you should be using the uhd for games anyway ..

 

Oh ok that's helpful. I wasn't sure about the lower tier ones.

[RanmaCanada 447]

In this situation I always suggest a laptop.  You can get laptops with broken screens for very cheap on ebay, and they have the same asics as their desktop counterparts.  

[Crowleyisking 8]

1 minute ago, RanmaCanada said:

In this situation I always suggest a laptop.  You can get laptops with broken screens for very cheap on ebay, and they have the same asics as their desktop counterparts.  

I didn't think laptops were as power efficient if left running 24/7

[lightsout 156]

On 2/3/2023 at 11:53 AM, Crowleyisking said:

I didn't think laptops were as power efficient if left running 24/7

If the screen is off it is running mobile hardware that is mean to sip power on a battery. Why wouldn't it?

[Crowleyisking 8]

2 hours ago, lightsout said:

If the screen is off it is running mobile hardware that is mean to sip power on a battery. Why wouldn't it?

That makes sense i guesss....I will investigate which mobile processor would be best.

[RanmaCanada 447]

On 03/02/2023 at 14:53, Crowleyisking said:

I didn't think laptops were as power efficient if left running 24/7

My laptop has a smashed screen, so I could just take it off if I wanted to and run "headless".  But putting the screen to sleep is more than enough.  As for power, the max I've seen the laptop use is about 40 watts (4k transcoding), AC adapter is only 65 watts.  I have an i3-1115G4.  Even with the screen on, the laptop sips 10.6-11.5 watts while direct streaming, according to my kill-a-watt.  I will also mention it's a 17" screen.

If you already have a dedicated dumb NAS/DAS, a laptop is a no brainer when it comes to using it as a media server.

[Crowleyisking 8]

10 hours ago, RanmaCanada said:

My laptop has a smashed screen, so I could just take it off if I wanted to and run "headless".  But putting the screen to sleep is more than enough.  As for power, the max I've seen the laptop use is about 40 watts (4k transcoding), AC adapter is only 65 watts.  I have an i3-1115G4.  Even with the screen on, the laptop sips 10.6-11.5 watts while direct streaming, according to my kill-a-watt.  I will also mention it's a 17" screen.

If you already have a dedicated dumb NAS/DAS, a laptop is a no brainer when it comes to using it as a media server.

I decided to treat myself and bought a Dell optiplex 3000, 16gb of Ram and a 12th Gen i5 12500t CPU. I think I will be fine for a few years now.

[rbjtech 4919]

15 minutes ago, Crowleyisking said:

I decided to treat myself and bought a Dell optiplex 3000, 16gb of Ram and a 12th Gen i5 12500t CPU. I think I will be fine for a few years now.

Nice - let us know how it performs - the 12500T is the low powered version - 35W - so great for an emby server 

[Crowleyisking 8]

4 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

Nice - let us know how it performs - the 12500T is the low powered version - 35W - so great for an emby server 

Will do. From what I've read it should more than cover any simultaneous 4k transcoding I might need. 

[RanmaCanada 447]

I will add, my laptop without the screen on, direct streams at 3.4 watts.  HAHA

[Gecko 71]

@Crowleyisking, how is your 12500T performing ? I just installed Emby (dockerized) on my 12500T and performance seems poor. Only 4-5 simultaneous transcodes are possible...

Furthermore, the UHD770 is recognized as a 'QuickSync Alder Lake-S GT1 UHD Graphics' Id:18064 (Driver: , Vendor: 32902, SDK Version: 1.255)'. Maybe something is off in my configuration. How does your compare to mine ?

[Crowleyisking 8]

It's been great for me, I never have that many transcodes at once. 

Where are you seeing that info about Alder Lake? In the transcoding section of the server?

[rbjtech 4919]

9 hours ago, Gecko said:

@Crowleyisking, how is your 12500T performing ? I just installed Emby (dockerized) on my 12500T and performance seems poor. Only 4-5 simultaneous transcodes are possible...

Furthermore, the UHD770 is recognized as a 'QuickSync Alder Lake-S GT1 UHD Graphics' Id:18064 (Driver: , Vendor: 32902, SDK Version: 1.255)'. Maybe something is off in my configuration. How does your compare to mine ?

'4-5 simultaneous transcodes' means very little without fully understanding what you are asking of the system.   

System (and thus shared GPU Memory?), Is this with fast I/O, transcoding swap to nvme/ssd?,4k Remux to what target size, tonemapping, and a docker layer - thus you are adding software layers into the mix.

You are also using a 12500T - a low powered/low clock version of the CPU - so while I do not think it should impact the transcoding ASICs - it will obviously impact supporting systems such as I/O and 'overall' performance.  4-5 transcodes doesn't seem that unreasonable if 4k remux to 1080p on HDD.

All these play a factor in the system transcoding 'performance'