tomreidy 0 Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 New Server Build: Z790 AORUS ELITE AX i7-14700K 1TB MP33 64 Gig DDR5 6000 (PC5 48000) (5) WD Red Pro WD201KFGX 20TB 7200 RPM 512MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s Reuse existing Case and PS I currently have an i3-6320, 16 GB Ram, and a Quadro P4000 and when about 8 users are watching Blu-Ray quality my CPU and GPU are usually North of 70%. Looking to make this my final build that will last for another 10 years. Thanks in advance Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37067 Posted February 10 Share Posted February 10 Possibly helpful info here: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanmaCanada 345 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 14700k does not support AV1 in quicksync. It also doesn't support VVC or AV2 obviously. 10 years is LONG time to expect hardware to last as we are quickly moving away from physical media to 100% streaming. As new codecs are ratified and put in place to save $$ on storage, the processing power required to decode and encode those new codecs jumps logrithmically. You'll be fine with h264 and HEVC, but AV1 and the newer codecs will start to become a problem in 5 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Q-Droid 643 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 2 hours ago, RanmaCanada said: 14700k does not support AV1 in quicksync. Are you sure about this? I thought AV1 8/10-bit decoding has been supported since 11th gen. Encoding AV1 wouldn't be needed on a media server. The clients can either direct play AV1 or the server would transcode to a playable codec which wouldn't be AV1. HEVC has been around for 10 years yet AVC (20 years) is still the most common codec used. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomreidy 0 Posted February 11 Author Share Posted February 11 Thank you, Luke, Ranma, and Q-Droid, Yes 10 years is a long time. I got 8 years from my old modest server that was built just to service just me. Since then- the kids grew up and moved out, the wife got tired of me and moved on, met a new woman with her own grown-up kids: who all wanted to tap into my videos. What started as a hobby 20+ years ago is becoming extinct. I will be retiring from work in a few months and just would like to upgrade the server one last time. Between friends and family I have 20+ clients who watch the movies and TV shows I have on the server. Most of the 5,300+ movies and over 2,000 TV episodes came from them: they just got tired of sifting through disc to find the movie they wanted to watch and gave me their entire library. I plan on saving movies to my server in the same format I have been using from the beginning- MP4's. I am not worried about saving money on storage by using the newest and greatest container. Storage is cheap and Hard Drive sizes keep getting bigger and bigger. I just was hoping to get a thumbs up that the Q-Sync in the CPU will be more than adequate to replace the P4000, that 64 GB's or Ram will be more than adequate to handle any audio transcoding. And because I am old and really don't know what I am doing- is there something else I should consider? Don't mention AMD- got burnt once and will never buy them again. Not interested in real server hardware (Xeon) or different OS (Windows 11)- it's all I know. In 10 years, we will not be able to get physical disc in my opinion. Everything will be streaming. But, it has been a fun hobby that has brought some joy to several people.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanmaCanada 345 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 12 hours ago, Q-Droid said: Are you sure about this? I thought AV1 8/10-bit decoding has been supported since 11th gen. Encoding AV1 wouldn't be needed on a media server. The clients can either direct play AV1 or the server would transcode to a playable codec which wouldn't be AV1. HEVC has been around for 10 years yet AVC (20 years) is still the most common codec used. It does support it in decode only. The problem I can see happening in the future is that the media cartels will drop AVC support, and possibly HEVC and go all in on AV1 or AV2, as their interests are all self serving. They will do anything to pad their bottom line, and paying for royalties for HEVC will be one thing they want to stop doing. Streaming is about to become a dystopian nightmare. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rbjtech 4265 Posted February 11 Share Posted February 11 (edited) imho, wait for the next gen (15th Gen) - which will include ARC gpu technology on chip (incl AV1 encode) + new achiectecture. While 12th Gen was a proper 'next gen' (P Core, E Cores etc), the 13th and 14th Gen are no more than the same processors with go faster stripes. They all use the same iGPU still... The Quadro P4000 is workhorse of your current setup - so yes, coupling that with a faster CPU will bring the overall CPU utilisation down (of course), but if the plan is to replace it with an iGPU - then I think you'll be disappointed that the current gen 12-14 quicksync is not significantly better vs the cost/effort at this time. Edited February 11 by rbjtech Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomreidy 0 Posted February 11 Author Share Posted February 11 When will the next “Lake” be released? And, do you have any idea what the cost will be? I am not opposed to waiting, but will it make a significant difference in the performance of the server based on what I am currently doing? I am currently ripping with Make MKV (Lifetime membership) and converting to MP4 with Handbrake- with about a 2/3’s compression. I could continue to use the P4000. I thought I read that the newest 770 graphics would outperform the P4000? If the next Lake isn’t going to be launched until the fall it will have to be extremely spectacular for me to postpone this build. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanmaCanada 345 Posted February 12 Share Posted February 12 6 hours ago, tomreidy said: When will the next “Lake” be released? And, do you have any idea what the cost will be? I am not opposed to waiting, but will it make a significant difference in the performance of the server based on what I am currently doing? I am currently ripping with Make MKV (Lifetime membership) and converting to MP4 with Handbrake- with about a 2/3’s compression. I could continue to use the P4000. I thought I read that the newest 770 graphics would outperform the P4000? If the next Lake isn’t going to be launched until the fall it will have to be extremely spectacular for me to postpone this build. Why are you converting to MP4? You should be converting to MKV so you can pack in the subtitles and chapter points with ease. The P4000 will continue to do the job, but the other thing you might consider is your overall array bandwidth. You will more than likely hit the limitations of your HDD's or network before you run into a transcoding limitation, and it is especially true if you end up doing multiple 4k trancodes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomreidy 0 Posted February 12 Author Share Posted February 12 I decided to stop at 2K quality. I didn’t see a great deal of difference even on my 85” Neo QLED. I have a 2 Gig up and 2 Gig down FIOS to my house so I am not really worried about bandwidth. I would probably consider storing in MKV in the future. The reason I initially chose MP4 was because I was told by someone that the MP4. would put less stress on my cpu/RAM. I got the P4000 in 2018 when someone on this forum said that it would help reduce the stress on the CPU- which it did and was grateful for the suggestion. I have had up to 12 simultaneous connections on my current setup and the cpu, you, and RAM were all pretty much maxed out. If I remember correctly 10 of those connections were DVD quality and only 2 were BR. The WD Reds are all directly connected to the MB in my current setup via Sata cables. I have a 1 TB NVME for artwork and other stuff. Once I get this put together I am sure I will have plenty of questions on how to configure some things to make it work the best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanmaCanada 345 Posted February 13 Share Posted February 13 Your upload and download bandwidth are crazy, but you will still be limited by your array bandwidth. I know Jason at BytemyBits on youtube was able to get 19 4k transcodes when using NVME storage, but I do not know what spinning rust's limitation might be, pending on what RAID level you are using, if you are using any. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomreidy 0 Posted February 13 Author Share Posted February 13 I decided to stop at 2K quality. I didn’t see a great deal of difference even on my 85” Neo QLED. I have a 2 Gig up and 2 Gig down FIOS to my house so I am not really worried about bandwidth. I would probably consider storing in MKV in the future. The reason I initially chose MP4 was because I was told by someone that the MP4. would put less stress on my cpu/RAM. I got the P4000 in 2018 when someone on this forum said that it would help reduce the stress on the CPU- which it did and was grateful for the suggestion. I have had up to 12 simultaneous connections on my current setup and the cpu, you, and RAM were all pretty much maxed out. If I remember correctly 10 of those connections were DVD quality and only 2 were BR. The WD Reds are all directly connected to the MB in my current setup via Sata cables. I have a 1 TB NVME for artwork and other stuff. Once I get this put together I am sure I will have plenty of questions on how to configure some things to make it work the best. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomreidy 0 Posted February 13 Author Share Posted February 13 I am not working with any (well, I have one) 4K content. About half are only DVD quality and the other half are 2K. I was just guessing that a substantial upgrade in the hardware may improve the performance of the server. I am not really looking to get 15+ streams at one time. It may get there and I will let you know what happens after I get it built and online. I am not running any kind of RAID right now. Every hard drive has a companion hard drive attached to my main rig which I manually backup every so often. I know- weird or stupid or something. I am sure it could be configured a lot better, but I am someone who started with keypunch cards back in the 70’s. I will come back to this thread once the system is built and report what it is capable of. Didn’t Jason achieve his 19 streams with an AMD processor? Just imagine what he could have accomplished with an Intel and Q-Sync? Just kidding Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomreidy 0 Posted March 12 Author Share Posted March 12 I finally got the build up and running and was wondering if anyone could help me optimize my server settings? To Recap: Dedicated System- i7-14700K (Stock Settings), 64 Gig DDR5 4800, 1 TB M.2 NVME for OS (Windows 11 Pro) and Temp Files & Artwork, (3) 18 TB WD Reds (5,400). Using built in Qsync at this time for transcoding. So far, I have had up to 6 remote streams, but I plan on running a huge test run with 10+ remote connections this weekend. Might as well see what she can do. System hasn't even broken a sweat. I have a few family members that have crappy internet. Is there any settings on the server that will improve their watching enjoyment? Anyway, any suggestions would be helpful. Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Q-Droid 643 Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 Now it's time to train your users. Historically the Emby client/server bandwidth detection has been unreliable and very often gets it wrong, very wrong. This can create friction among friends and family . You can set your server-wide internet streaming bitrate limit to a value that you think will work for most or all of your users and fits your upstream bandwidth. It's a per stream value so consider the aggregate. Then you tell (train/show/do it for them) to set their bitrate limit on their client to a value that's reasonable but shy of their internet downstream. Could be 70%, 80% or 90% and it will be different for every household. You can also set a user level limit on your server that overrides the server limit and still respects the client limit. But all remote users should really have a client side bitrate limit defined so that the auto-detected value doesn't cause problems. 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomreidy 0 Posted March 12 Author Share Posted March 12 Thank you for replying so quickly. I don't think my friends or family would understand how to do this. Isn't this something I can control for each user? So, if I knew their bit rate, I could set it at say, 75% of their max and be safe? My upload actual is around 1.8 Gbits. Most of my friends and family have the Fios 500 Mbit up/down. Should I Enable Throttling? Does this depend on what my server is doing with 10+ streams? What is "Encoding Profile Limit"- Don't mess with? Is there any information for dummies on the Emby Community that I can get some info on? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy2Play 8282 Posted March 12 Share Posted March 12 (edited) The issue is the client Auto quality setting can go rogue on Remote connections and fallback to say the clients hardcoded low bitrates. Rokus are the worst, but I just tell my remote users to set client quality to max setting then throttle the user bitrate server side per user or globally on Network menu. Edited March 12 by Happy2Play 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Q-Droid 643 Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 2 hours ago, tomreidy said: Thank you for replying so quickly. I don't think my friends or family would understand how to do this. Isn't this something I can control for each user? So, if I knew their bit rate, I could set it at say, 75% of their max and be safe? My upload actual is around 1.8 Gbits. Most of my friends and family have the Fios 500 Mbit up/down. Should I Enable Throttling? Does this depend on what my server is doing with 10+ streams? What is "Encoding Profile Limit"- Don't mess with? Is there any information for dummies on the Emby Community that I can get some info on? You should always enable throttling. It's a workload management feature that levels out the server load without affecting streaming quality or the user experience. The more streams you have transcoding the better it works. Setting the bitrate on the server side is not enough. If the clients are set to Auto then Emby will attempt to detect the available bandwidth and more often than not gets it wrong. During playback startup the stream bitrate will be set to the lowest value between the server, client or what's detected when Auto. One way or the other the clients should have a non-Auto setting for bitrate. You could do what @Happy2Play suggests and have them all set to max then you can limit on the server side. I know some users are not technical but they're usually in a better position to know what they have and how it's used. A household with multiple school aged kids and low bandwidth probably wouldn't want to give Emby 80% of that when streaming. "Encoding Profile Limit" is more of a compatibility feature. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanmaCanada 345 Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 14 hours ago, Happy2Play said: The issue is the client Auto quality setting can go rogue on Remote connections and fallback to say the clients hardcoded low bitrates. Rokus are the worst, but I just tell my remote users to set client quality to max setting then throttle the user bitrate server side per user or globally on Network menu. I have had less problems with Roku's locking down the bitrate than I have with Apple TV's haha. I don't know what Apple does, but in the past every user I had with an Apple TV was locked to 3mbit while the same people with a Roku had no problems. And of course the users are not smart enough to go in and change the settings. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rbjtech 4265 Posted March 13 Share Posted March 13 I find any remote estimation of bandwidth to be way off with emby - it will often force transcoding to something like 2 Mbit/sec when there is 60+ Mbit available (their d/l). I know it's not latency related as a ping to them is < 10-20 ms. If I ask the user to set the emby client to half of their max download speed (30Mbit in this case) and I enforce the same on the server side - then they rarely need to transcode - even for 20-25Mbit 4K streaming. It's a shame as admins we can't force a bitrate limit client side for known/fixed remote network setups.. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RanmaCanada 345 Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 Maybe it's a feature request we can put in? I know for me it's far worse for people who are on cable instead of fibre, as the cable ISP locally loves to traffic shape harder than Hulk likes to smash. Even their Netflix watching is massively throttled and it just makes it a blotchy mess. I've tested it with friends who are on the same ISP as me and watching 4k remuxes is not a problem for them. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomreidy 0 Posted March 14 Author Share Posted March 14 On 3/12/2024 at 10:13 PM, Q-Droid said: You should always enable throttling. It's a workload management feature that levels out the server load without affecting streaming quality or the user experience. The more streams you have transcoding the better it works. Setting the bitrate on the server side is not enough. If the clients are set to Auto then Emby will attempt to detect the available bandwidth and more often than not gets it wrong. During playback startup the stream bitrate will be set to the lowest value between the server, client or what's detected when Auto. One way or the other the clients should have a non-Auto setting for bitrate. You could do what @Happy2Play suggests and have them all set to max then you can limit on the server side. I know some users are not technical but they're usually in a better position to know what they have and how it's used. A household with multiple school aged kids and low bandwidth probably wouldn't want to give Emby 80% of that when streaming. "Encoding Profile Limit" is more of a compatibility feature. I am not the smartest when it comes to this, but can't I just go to their settings on Emby and enter this information? I just thought that when I entered the User's and their Passwords I could just enter their Bandwidth and how many streams. Am I completely wrong about this? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Happy2Play 8282 Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 7 minutes ago, tomreidy said: I am not the smartest when it comes to this, but can't I just go to their settings on Emby and enter this information? I just thought that when I entered the User's and their Passwords I could just enter their Bandwidth and how many streams. Am I completely wrong about this? Sorry no as every client/app setting is its own. Example two browsers. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tomreidy 0 Posted March 14 Author Share Posted March 14 Okay. I made everyone's max at 30 Mbps on the server. Does that sound okay? My highest Bitrate movie is 19. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luke 37067 Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 40 minutes ago, tomreidy said: Okay. I made everyone's max at 30 Mbps on the server. Does that sound okay? My highest Bitrate movie is 19. HI, what are you hoping to accomplish by doing that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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