Best hardware for 4K streaming

[bartffield 1]

I've been running emby on an old laptop, which was doing great until I started streaming 4K content (movies freeze every several seconds), so I'm finally looking around to get a tower to work as my home server, but I want it to be able to handle transcoding 2160p without hiccups and I wanted to ask the community for hardware recommendations. 

 

I noticed that there's some experimental support for GPU - which of this would give me the best results and which has the biggest support? NVENC? 

 

Other than that, I'm assuming I need a 6th gen i7 processor an SSD drive... 

 

Thank you for any tips!

[MSattler 387]

Biggest support I believe is STILL quicksync on Windows. For x265 you want to go with the latest processor. Like i5/i7-6700 etc.

[Guest asrequested]

I don't have a 4k TV, but I do have an i7 6700k, and it works very well. Even without QS, it ploughs through everything. And it does support 4k at 24fps

[aspdend 174]

Funnily enough, I am just looking at a similar thing - I've been running my emby server on a very old AMD Sempron 245 machine with 8Gb of RAM and an AMD 6970 GPU.

 

Although I don't need to do any transcoding (yet as my sons are too young to be watching on other screens) my current htpc has been running for a good few years now so I want a similar longevity from a new htpc. I am getting a 4k TV later this year so I am looking for something that can output 4k (4:4:4 hdcp and HDMI 2.0) as the TV will be HDR capable. my current feeling without spending too much is a Skylake i5 6600 (Not going Kabylake as I am still using Windows 7 on the machine and will be until the Emby LiveTV and Theatre is up to replacing Emby WMC and WMC) married with an nVidia GTX 950 (As this is the cheapest card that will provide a HDMI 2.0 output without using a converter/adaptor). Along with a new motherboard and 16Gb of RAM, this should last me a good few years and cost about £450 and be more than capable of streaming what I need it to in the next few years. 

[CBers 6770]

Surely the main requirement for playback should be Direct Play/Stream rather than transcoding.

 

If you can get Direct Play/Stream, then you won't need to transcode, so the server doesn't need to be that beefy.

[RedBaron164 18]

If your not transcoding you don't need much in the way of the server. The client will handle decoding the file and in that case I'd say a small Windows box is your best bet. Roku's/Fire TV's are great but they will most likely require the server to transcode.

 

If you end up with clients that need to transcode videos then the CPU is going to be important. If your goal is one transcode stream I would recommend at minimum a med-level quad core cpu, for 4k x265 files your probably going to want 6-cores. If you want to be able to do two transcode streams at the same time your probably looking at a minimum of a high-end 8-core cpu. My emby server has 4gb of ram and barely touches it so memory is not important so save on memory and put the extra money into the cpu.

 

I have not been able to experiment with the GPU encoding as my server does not have the required hardware so I can't say how much that will help.

[mastrmind11 717]

I have one of these https://www.solid-run.com/freescale-imx6-family/cubox-i/ on every TV in the house.  Can get it w/ Android or openElec pre-installed.  No transcoding required.  

[MSattler 387]

I have one of these https://www.solid-run.com/freescale-imx6-family/cubox-i/ on every TV in the house.  Can get it w/ Android or openElec pre-installed.  No transcoding required.  

 

Not going to work for 4k though, at least not according to their specs.  I don't see h265 listed.

[MSattler 387]

If your not transcoding you don't need much in the way of the server. The client will handle decoding the file and in that case I'd say a small Windows box is your best bet. Roku's/Fire TV's are great but they will most likely require the server to transcode.

 

If you end up with clients that need to transcode videos then the CPU is going to be important. If your goal is one transcode stream I would recommend at minimum a med-level quad core cpu, for 4k x265 files your probably going to want 6-cores. If you want to be able to do two transcode streams at the same time your probably looking at a minimum of a high-end 8-core cpu. My emby server has 4gb of ram and barely touches it so memory is not important so save on memory and put the extra money into the cpu.

 

I have not been able to experiment with the GPU encoding as my server does not have the required hardware so I can't say how much that will help.

 

While a high end core will help, it's not totally necessary if he uses Quicksync and runs windows.  Doing so will take a huge load off of the cpu.

[mastrmind11 717]

Not going to work for 4k though, at least not according to their specs.  I don't see h265 listed.

You are correct sir.  Missed the 4k part.

[RedBaron164 18]

While a high end core will help, it's not totally necessary if he uses Quicksync and runs windows.  Doing so will take a huge load off of the cpu.

 

I only mentioned the high end cpu IF he's doing a lot of transcoding. If your running Windows clients you shouldn't need to transcode at all. My Media Center PC running Emby Theater never has to transcode anything.

[RedBaron164 18]

I've been curious about these https://www.amazon.com/Intel-Compute-Computer-processor-BOXSTK1AW32SCR but I don't know if/how they will handle 4k content.

 

The NVidia Shield should handle 4k streaming without transcoding fine but it's a bit on the pricey side since it's focused on gaming.

https://www.amazon.com/NVIDIA-SHIELD-Streaming-Player-Android-Gaming/dp/B00U33Q940

Edited September 28, 2016 by RedBaron164

[aspdend 174]

"My emby server has 4gb of ram and barely touches it so memory is not important so save on memory and put the extra money into the cpu."

 

My current emby server has 8Gb of RAM and Emby is often maxing out at over 3Gb worth (I have the 32 bit patch to use over 3Gb installed) and really slowing the machine down.

[RedBaron164 18]

My current emby server has 8Gb of RAM and Emby is often maxing out at over 3Gb worth (I have the 32 bit patch to use over 3Gb installed) and really slowing the machine down.

 

That's interesting, currently the Emby service uses about 1.6gb of memory on my 2012 R2 Server. I've never seen it go much higher than that. What OS are you running Emby on? Does it varies by OS?

 

I imagine it mostly depends on the size of your library. I haven't had any issues with my Library which is over 1200movies, 150gb of music, and 3.5TB of TV Shows.

Edited September 28, 2016 by RedBaron164

[aspdend 174]

That's interesting, currently the Emby service uses about 1.6gb of memory on my 2012 R2 Server. I've never seen it go much higher than that. What OS are you running Emby on? Does it varies by OS?

 

I imagine it mostly depends on the size of your library. I haven't had any issues with my Library which is over 1200movies, 150gb of music, and 3.5TB of TV Shows.

 

I am running WIn7 home 64-bit on an old Sempron 245 duo core with 8Gb of RAM. My library is circa 30Tb on a separate UnRAID server - 4000 Movies; 80,000 music tracks; 2000 music videos; not sure how many TV Shows...

[RedBaron164 18]

Ok, that explains it then, from what I was reading it's depending on library size. So 4gb of ram works for my library which is probably a third of what yours is. So I'd say OP needs to take that into consideration. If you have less than 10TB of media 4gb of ram will probably be fine. Maybe 4gb of ram per 10TB or 15TB of media is a good rule to follow.

[Happy2Play 8272]

Ram is really subjective, I really never see Emby use more than 1gb.

[MSattler 387]

I only mentioned the high end cpu IF he's doing a lot of transcoding. If your running Windows clients you shouldn't need to transcode at all. My Media Center PC running Emby Theater never has to transcode anything.

 

While you are right, my problem with this approach is that typically, once people start using Emby, and realize there are so many clients for remote use, they are going to go down that right.  But even in that case, you don't need an i7-6700 unless you want to be able to handle a ton of transcoding at once.  Realistically QuickSync changed the game for cpu requirements in relation to transcoding.

[MSattler 387]

Ram is really subjective, I really never see Emby use more than 1gb.

 

I've got about 40TB of content, 1700 movies, 120 or so series, and emby is using 1.2Gb.

 

Running an i7-6700, 24GB of ram, dual ssd boot disks running in raid 1, and 5 bonded 1Gb NIC's.

 

=)

Edited September 29, 2016 by MSattler

[RedBaron164 18]

While you are right, my problem with this approach is that typically, once people start using Emby, and realize there are so many clients for remote use, they are going to go down that right.  But even in that case, you don't need an i7-6700 unless you want to be able to handle a ton of transcoding at once.  Realistically QuickSync changed the game for cpu requirements in relation to transcoding.

 

My Emby server is running as a VM on top of AMD hardware so Quick Sync isn't going to help me unfortunately. Even if I did run it straight off the bare hardware I generally use AMD for everything so I'd have to use one of the other hardware acceleration methods. But yes, if you have the hardware that can take advantage of Quick Sync or some of the other Hardware acceleration methods for Transcoding then yes, you would not need to have as beefy of a CPU.

Edited September 29, 2016 by RedBaron164

[aspdend 174]

Ok, that explains it then, from what I was reading it's depending on library size. So 4gb of ram works for my library which is probably a third of what yours is. So I'd say OP needs to take that into consideration. If you have less than 10TB of media 4gb of ram will probably be fine. Maybe 4gb of ram per 10TB or 15TB of media is a good rule to follow.

I don't think the ropey old CPU helps...

[RedBaron164 18]

I don't think the ropey old CPU helps...

 

I was only referring to memory usage, I'm sure the old CPU isn't helping :-)

[aspdend 174]

I was only referring to memory usage, I'm sure the old CPU isn't helping :-)

I appreciate you were, I was just thinking that my htpc as a whole is more resource hungry than if I replace the setup with a more modern system, therefore this would adjust the RAM/Storage ratio idea - just thinking out loud really

[RedBaron164 18]

I understand, I've been trying to build an environment where my client devices don't need to transcode at all so that CPU is mostly an afterthought. But so far finding small streaming clients that don't require transcoding and don't cost an arm and a leg has been tricky.

[aspdend 174]

I agree, I am trying to avoid the need for transcoding, whilst still being able to output full 4k and record Live TV - although you think the CPU is an afterthought, I am not convinced  that the library management etc wouldn't benefit form a beefier CPU...I may be wrong, but I'm trying to figure it all out to see if it is better to rebuild my htpc or go with another SFF android box or similar