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Any successful AMD builds out there?


Jennice

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Jennice

Hi all,

 

I am considering a new server build.

 

Unfortunately, someone has had bad experiences with the threadripper.

 

Who has good Ryzen 1700x builds? I am considering this over Intel, but have no experience with AMD since the first Athlon days. (shortly after electricity was invented, it feels).

 

I'd really like to hear people's recent experiences with AMD.

 

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BAlGaInTl

Yup. A nightmare for him. :(

 

Edit:

His recent comment is on this page:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/51347-server-gpu-acceleration-or-cpu-processing/page-5

 

He was just recommending Ryzen to me... glad I went a different direction.

 

:)

 

Ultimately I've decided to repurpose my desktop PC (E3-1271v3) to be my server.  It will have half the cores of my old system, but a lot better single core performance.  Instead, I'm considering a R7 1700 for my desktop PC.  I can hold out until Intel 8th Gen stuff is more readily available before I make a decision.

 

Any reason you are set on that platform?  If you can wait, the 8th Gen Intel stuff will be available.  Plus you get decent hardware decoding built in, even if you decide not to use it. 

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jon@spoonamore.net

I rebuilt my Desktop/Server in the Spring of 2016.  I replaced my ageing AMD 1100T 6-core setup with the following....

 

Xeon E5-2658-v3 (12-core/24-threads) - Slightly faster than a Ryzen 1700x on all threads - Got it for a steal off eBay.... $160!!!!

New 32GB of DDR4 RAM

New ASRock 2011-v3 Motherboard

New CPU cooler

New and better SSD OS Boot Drive

 

(Recycled my Case, PSU, GPU, Data-Storage)

 

Over total rebuild cost....  $530

 

I've had over 4 people watching 1080p video with no problems at the same time.  Even while I'm transcoding video to MP4 and surfing the WEB all at the same time.

 

FYI....  I do transcode all of my video media to MP4 (x264/MP3).  This helps minimize on-the-fly transcoding for most of friends and family who connect to my Emby Server.

 

For me....  I hate to buy new.  I'm a tight-wad!!!!  For the computing power I have now, I could have easily spent triple the amount of money had I bought new at the time of the rebuild.

 

Now that DDR4 RAM prices are crazy expensive.... Going old/refurb is a very good option!

Edited by jon@spoonamore.net
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BAlGaInTl

I rebuilt my Desktop/Server in the Spring of 2016.  I replaced my ageing AMD 1100T 6-core setup with the following....

 

Xeon E5-2658-v3 (12-core/24-threads) - Slightly faster than a Ryzen 1700x on all threads - Got it for a steal off eBay.... $160!!!!

32GB of DDR4 RAM

A better CPU cooler

A better SSD OS Boot Drive

 

(Recycled my Case, PSU, GPU, Data-Storage)

 

Over total rebuild cost....  $530

 

I've had over 4 people watching 1080p video with no problems at the same time.  Even while I'm transcoding video to MP4 and surfing the WEB all at the same time.

 

FYI....  I do transcode all of my video media to MP4 (x264/MP3).  This helps minimize on-the-fly transcoding for most of friends and family who connect to my Emby Server.

 

For me....  I hate to buy new.  I'm a tight-wad!!!!  For the computing power I have now, I could have easily spent triple the amount of money had I bought new at the time of the rebuild.

 

Now that DDR4 RAM prices are crazy expensive.... Going old/refurb is a very good option!

 

I'm with you.  I like re-purposing older hardware to save wherever possible.

 

That looks like a great setup you have there, but a higher TDP.  I try to balance for efficiency too.

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jon@spoonamore.net

I'm with you.  I like re-purposing older hardware to save wherever possible.

 

That looks like a great setup you have there, but a higher TDP.  I try to balance for efficiency too.

 

My next upgrade will be CPU only.  I have my eye on a 20-core/40-threaded Xeon.  It's almost the same multi-threaded speed of the Threadripper 1950x.  It was about $1500 in the fall of 2016 on eBay.  It's currently $730.  I'm waiting for it to drop below $300.  This will be the last upgrade for this architecture (2011-v3).  I try to get at least 5 years out of any of my computer builds before future upgrades.

 

Forgot to mention.... I purchased a brand new motherboard for my last rebuild.  That was included in the $530 cost.

Edited by jon@spoonamore.net
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Guest asrequested

For basic desktop use, you'll notice a difference between Ryzen and Intel. Single core and quad core performance is not as good as Intel.

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Guest asrequested

And that is why I'm giving the threadripper a shot. My server won't be jumping through hoops. It's just gonna sit there and crunch data....I hope :/

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jon@spoonamore.net

My reason for considering 1700x was it's math capabilities for transcoding. :)

It's not math capabilities of a CPU you should be looking into.  It's raw CPU power you need for good and fast transcoding.  The more cores/threads @ faster Ghz is what you want.  I always transcode using the x264 video codec.  It's made to use as many cores/threads as it can.  Even with a good beast of a CPU, you won't get all the horsepower out of it when transcoding.  That's why I will transcode 2 or 3 videos are the same time.  I guarantee that I make my CPU hurt!!!!  LOL!!!!  The 1700x is a good candidate on price-2-cpu-power specs.  That's unless you go old-gen used CPUs.

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Guest asrequested

Well, I've finally got mine up and running. All 12 cores and 24 threads are present. Tomorrow, I'll start dialing everything in.

 

Building a Threadripper system isn't for the inexperienced. As time goes on, I'm hoping they really improve the BIOS. 

Edited by Doofus
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BAlGaInTl

Well, I've finally got mine up and running. All 12 cores and 24 threads are present. Tomorrow, I'll start dialing everything in.

 

Building a Threadripper system isn't for the inexperienced. As time goes on, I'm hoping they really improve the BIOS. 

 

Typical of really new stuff.

 

One of the reason I wait a lot.  :)

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Guest asrequested

Typical of really new stuff.

 

One of the reason I wait a lot.  :)

 

I have a character flaw. I can't help messing with my stuff lol. As frustrating as it gets, I get a perverse pleasure from it  :blink:

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Yea, whenever I buy, I generally consume top of the line (or near it) but 1 gen old, so I don't go postal from incompatibilities, and missing code sets.

 

I am planning on building a VMware host on an AMD 1700 with 32GB of RAM. I am hoping to move my NAS Emby server, unifi controller, home automation server, and my PFsense firewall to it. I also plan on standing up a m$ home server on it. I convinced a buddy of mine to do this and it is working really well aside from the SPF aspect (he needs to stand up a backup vm host).

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Edited by Tur0k
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Jennice

Hmmm... it seems the i7-8700k is coming down in price here in Denmark.

 

It's about the same as a Ryzen 1700x and a small GPU (onboard in Intel).

 

Right now I'm focusing on Emby server and transcoding, but considering Doofus' notes on his threadripper build, I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it for me to go down the (unfamilar) AMD path at this point.

I've done quite a few Intel builds, and they've all worked fine for me. As long as I'm paying attention to the BIOS version of any chosen motherboard, it's all been plug-n-play with Intel so far.

 

If the PC will be re-used for general purposes at some other point, it may be worth considering Intel for it's general purpose speed. 

 

Any thoughts on this in the forum?

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jon@spoonamore.net

Hmmm... it seems the i7-8700k is coming down in price here in Denmark.

 

It's about the same as a Ryzen 1700x and a small GPU (onboard in Intel).

 

Right now I'm focusing on Emby server and transcoding, but considering Doofus' notes on his threadripper build, I'm starting to wonder if it's worth it for me to go down the (unfamilar) AMD path at this point.

I've done quite a few Intel builds, and they've all worked fine for me. As long as I'm paying attention to the BIOS version of any chosen motherboard, it's all been plug-n-play with Intel so far.

 

If the PC will be re-used for general purposes at some other point, it may be worth considering Intel for it's general purpose speed. 

 

Any thoughts on this in the forum?

 

For me....  I've always built systems with used components (CPU and RAM only) with what was easy and cheap to get.  When I rebuilt my system in 2016, Intel was the best option for me at the time.  AMD really did not have any good multi-core/multi-threaded CPUs available within a price range I wanted to settle with.  Any way you look at it, the name of the game for you and me is....  For Transcoding, you need a lot of Cores/Threads!!!   But... If you like to game to, more GHz is going to be very important as well.  I'm not a gamer so I'm fine with my setup.

 

I factored in a 3 to 5 year EOL for my new rebuild.  I've past my 1st 1.5 years and I have a CPU upgrade on the horizon in about 1 year.  So I am on track to meet my EOL goals.  By the time I'm ready for a major rebuild again....  Used CPU's like Threadripper will be looking really good at that time. The way that the AMD/Intel Price Wars are going, I see CPU's becoming obsolete faster and upgrades sooner!!!  So, I think used CPU deals will be hitting the pubic all the time.

 

I spent 3 months of research on my current rebuild.  I planned and waited for deals to be had.  My advice...  Don't be chained to one platform and plan for future upgrades so that they are easy to implement.  I went used Xeon.  Picked the 2011-v3 CPU socket system because it still had life in it and it used the latest DDR4 RAM.  With any luck, my next rebuild will need DDR4 RAM.  So, I won't have to buy RAM again. DDR5 is not scheduled to come out until 2020.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Jennice

Hi guys,

I finally decided... for intel. (sorry AMD :)  )

I have made many Intel builds over time, and it's been easy.

 

Now my emby is being set up, but can I transfer settings from one pc to the next?

Also, where are channel pictures stored after manual upload?

 

 

Jennice

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jon@spoonamore.net

Hi guys,

I finally decided... for intel. (sorry AMD :)  )

I have made many Intel builds over time, and it's been easy.

 

Now my emby is being set up, but can I transfer settings from one pc to the next?

Also, where are channel pictures stored after manual upload?

 

 

Jennice

 

I use the Backup and Restore Plugin so that I can restore User Accounts and Library Setups.  It does backup and restore the Library Images if you used your own.  As for the actual Library Data,  I've never found a way to backup and restore that.  Once you have the new Emby Server up and running, it will have to do a Full-Scan.

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Jennice

A little update... my i7-8700k (6core/12 threads), 16 GB RAM, SATA SSD, is running 3 transcode streams fine (2 mbps each), and Emby is set to use 2 threads for each.

In comparison, my i7-870 (2.9 GHz, old thing), 12 GB RAM, SSD, just manages 1 stream of 2 mbps.

 

 

If running transcode # 4, it crashes the 3 transcode threads already running, even if the CPU is far from fully loaded.

 

My assumption is therefore, that FFMpeg is not using hyperthreading correctly, or at least not by default. The task manager also shows the 12 threads, many of which are not utilized very much).

 

Any iseas on how to make the most of hyperthreading or setting Emby / FFMpeg correctly to use hyperthreading?

 

/Jennice

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Waldonnis

Any chance you can post some transcode logs and a server log that shows the crashing behaviour with ffmpeg?

 

As for threading, I'm a little confused as "threads" in your post seems to mean a few different things that aren't interchangeable.  I'm guessing that you're setting ffmpeg to use two threads per instance, and have three instances running (totaling six worker threads)....but your 12 physical/virtual cores aren't showing a lot of load across them?  Just trying to make sure I'm understanding the situation first before commenting further.

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Jennice

Hi Here are the server logs for this afternoon of experimenting.

 

The load was spread across most of the CPU, despite the selection of 2 threads per instance in Emby.

 

My theory is that the specification counts physical cores, which works with 3 transcode tasks, but hangs with 4. (would need 8 CPU cores).

 

I hve now tried to select 1 thread in Emby settings, 3 mbps stream limit.

 

Using this, I can show 4 TV channels transcoded, load spread across all CPU, except Core #0 of 12.

 

Edit: See CPU load screenshot here: https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/10723-gpu-transcoding-intel-quicksync-and-nvidia-nvenc/page-66

Server logs 20171205_17hrs.zip

Edited by Jennice
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Guest asrequested

If you're using HWA, that shouldn't be reflected in the CPU usage, unless it isn't working. You'll need to look at your GPU usage. What I was finding was that the CPU was doing some of the work, and the GPU wasn't taking care of it on its own. Hence the reason for me abandoning HWA. If it's working as desired, the CPU will hardly be used. Example, when I used HWA for playback with the right filter config, I see all of the work happening through the various parts of the GPU and the CPU virtually doesn't change. Ffmpeg doesn't appear to be using Quick Sync, efficiently, with these new GPUs.

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