i7-4790 (non-K) for 4k streaming?

[pmac 143]

Hi, currently I have my server running on an i7-4790k and it seems to be working fine for my purposes, but I've recently come across a cheap CPU/RAM/MOBO combo, and I'm wondering if it's worthwhile. 

It's a 4790 (non-K) with 32gb DDR3 and MOBO for $75 Canadian. 

I was thinking about swapping it for my current setup (4790K/32gb DDR3) and giving my current setup to my son for playing Minecraft instead of the Mini-PC (N5095/8GB DDR4) that he's currently using. 

I'm currently only streaming 4K to one TV in the house, and the rest of the clients at home are all 1080p, as well as two 1080p remote clients. 

Would the 4790 (non-K) be up to the task? I believe it uses the same Intel HD 4600 my current machine has. 

If not, I've thought about getting it anyway to try and stuff into my 1U server chassis that currently houses a stripped-down old laptop with Proxmox and runs Home Assistant, Docker, Jellyseerr, Unifi Controller, AdGuard, etc. 

Does this make any sense for my purpose? Or should I pass on the deal and wait for something more modern? 

 

EDIT: One of the main reasons I've thought about this is because currently my 4790k is my "daily driver" PC as well as Emby server (and Radarr/Sonarr). And I'd like to move Emby, etc to a dedicated machine to separate it from anything not media related and eventually build a new daily driver for everything else. 

Edited December 2, 2024 by pmac

[rbjtech 5282]

Yes the 4790 is more than up to the task - BUT ...

personally, save your $75 for something much more modern (the 4790 is 10 years old ..).   10th Gen is probably the lowest I would go - a 10100 for example.

You don't need memory for emby - so if you need to compromise on funds - go with something that you can later upgrade if you wish.

 

[pmac 143]

1 hour ago, rbjtech said:

Yes the 4790 is more than up to the task - BUT ...

personally, save your $75 for something much more modern (the 4790 is 10 years old ..).   10th Gen is probably the lowest I would go - a 10100 for example.

You don't need memory for emby - so if you need to compromise on funds - go with something that you can later upgrade if you wish.

 

Okay, thanks! As this seems like a pretty affordable setup, and I've been out of the loop on hardware for a long time; does this setup seem worthwhile for the other purposes I listed?

Or would there be better/more modern hardware I could get for a similar price? 

Currently I've only got 8gb ram in my other server (the one running Home Assistant, etc) and it could definitely use more, but the old laptop I've got jammed in there is maxed out on RAM right now. CPU spikes pretty high at times as well, so there isn't much room for any more services to run on it without upgrading soon. 

[RanmaCanada 494]

Yeah the 4790 is almost e-waste at this point. If you're stuck at the $75-$100 price range you probably just missed the best opportunity to buy on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But let's see what I can find on eBay. As you live in Ontario I am not going to presume you have close access to the border like myself. It's not going to be easy as shipping to Canada is dumb expensive. Dell Micro i3-8100T for $125 CDN before taxes. If you have access to the US border things would be far easier as you can get an 8th gen micro system for under $100 CDN no problem, it's the absurd price of shipping up to Canuckistan that makes it not worth your time and money.

If you let me know if you have access to the border I can check to see what I can find that is more powerful and in your price range. If you could get up to $200 you can actually get an incredibly powerful laptop for cheap and use that as your Emby server. I personally use an i5-1235u with a smashed screen as my server.  For example here is an i3-1215u laptop for $130 USD, and all it needs is usb NIC which can be bought for $20.  Passmark score comparison of a 4790 4 cores 8 threads vs i3-1215u with 2 cores, 8 threads.

[pmac 143]

On 03/12/2024 at 19:18, RanmaCanada said:

Yeah the 4790 is almost e-waste at this point. If you're stuck at the $75-$100 price range you probably just missed the best opportunity to buy on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. But let's see what I can find on eBay. As you live in Ontario I am not going to presume you have close access to the border like myself. It's not going to be easy as shipping to Canada is dumb expensive. Dell Micro i3-8100T for $125 CDN before taxes. If you have access to the US border things would be far easier as you can get an 8th gen micro system for under $100 CDN no problem, it's the absurd price of shipping up to Canuckistan that makes it not worth your time and money.

If you let me know if you have access to the border I can check to see what I can find that is more powerful and in your price range. If you could get up to $200 you can actually get an incredibly powerful laptop for cheap and use that as your Emby server. I personally use an i5-1235u with a smashed screen as my server.  For example here is an i3-1215u laptop for $130 USD, and all it needs is usb NIC which can be bought for $20.  Passmark score comparison of a 4790 4 cores 8 threads vs i3-1215u with 2 cores, 8 threads.

I just came into an older laptop with an I3-8130U, I'd like to move my Emby server off of my current setup (4790k) and onto a dedicated machine. 

I also came into one with an I7-4500U. Which of the 3 processors would be better suited for a dedicated Emby server? 4500U, 8130U, or my current setup with 4790K?

[pmac 143]

Nevermind about the 8130U, I just opened it up and the motherboard is toast. Looks like either the battery shorted or water damage, or possibly both, but there's a ton of corrosion on the MB... 

[RanmaCanada 494]

It's a tough call as the 4500u will do the job, but it will be slow. The quicksync from that era is also garbage tier.

I would seriously just get something newer if possible.

You never did say if you had access to the border, as prices are significantly cheaper stateside, even with our horrible dollar. I've seen i3-7100T/8100T IBM tiny's for $40 USD...$16 USD shipping on the US site.

[pmac 143]

On 22/12/2024 at 01:44, RanmaCanada said:

It's a tough call as the 4500u will do the job, but it will be slow. The quicksync from that era is also garbage tier.

I would seriously just get something newer if possible.

You never did say if you had access to the border, as prices are significantly cheaper stateside, even with our horrible dollar. I've seen i3-7100T/8100T IBM tiny's for $40 USD...$16 USD shipping on the US site.

Unfortunately I'm a long way from the border. Another option I just thought of, which may be better or worse; I'm not sure - I also have a mini-PC with an N100. With this being a newer CPU, would it be a better fit as far as transcoding and codec support? I'm not sure how these mini-PC's stack up when it comes to power required for transcoding and other server-side tasks.

[RanmaCanada 494]

the N100 will be more than enough. It might struggle on items that require subtitles as they are single threaded, but other than that, you will be pretty much golden. Just make sure it's running windows as I know Linux had issues with this processor not even a year ago.

[pmac 143]

On 23/12/2024 at 19:17, RanmaCanada said:

the N100 will be more than enough. It might struggle on items that require subtitles as they are single threaded, but other than that, you will be pretty much golden. Just make sure it's running windows as I know Linux had issues with this processor not even a year ago.

Okay, thanks!

[pmac 143]

Sorry to keep coming back to this, but what are your thoughts on a mini-pc (Specifically Beelink U59) with an N5105 processor as an Emby server? I actually forgot that I had it, and would rather use that than the N100 my son is currently using (mostly just to play Minecraft). 

[rbjtech 5282]

Technically similiar - but the N100 is much nwer and will out perform it using much less power.   Of the two, I'd use the N100 for Emby.

btw - a google comparison of any processor 'X vs Y' will give you the sites that compare CPU's/GPU's etc - in short, you want the least power, most cores at the higher frequency and latest iGPU ... lol  .. which is more than likely the newest cpu.

Edited January 1, 2025 by rbjtech

[pmac 143]

30 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

Technically similiar - but the N100 is much nwer and will out perform it using much less power.   Of the two, I'd use the N100 for Emby.

btw - a google comparison of any processor 'X vs Y' will give you the sites that compare CPU's/GPU's etc - in short, you want the least power, most cores at the higher frequency and latest iGPU ... lol  .. which is more than likely the newest cpu.

Sorry if my questions may have seemed ignorant, lol. I'm not new to computer hardware in general, I've built a few PC's over the years (though it has been a while since building a new one, so I'm not really up-to-date on current hardware) and I do normally use a combination of userbenchmark and technical city when comparing CPU performance.

I only ask here because I'm not exactly sure how certain hardware may perform in a real-life scenario when being used as an Emby server, when it comes to hardware transcoding and media codec playback, etc. 

While I do own a few mini-PC's, I'm not very well-versed in their performance when being used for something like my use-case for a media server, compared to a classical desktop PC - which I'm more familiar with, hardware-wise. 

Both of the aforementioned processors use an Intel UHD iGPU, and I believe the N5105 has as slightly higher max frequency (+/- 500MHz) on the GPU, and the N100 has a slightly higher CPU boost clock (I don't plan on doing any overclocking on such a SFF PC) and power-wise, I'm not very concerned about since I have a bunch of power hungry PC's running 24/7 as it is, and there's a very miniscule difference in power consumption between these two processesors - especially compared to other machines I have running. 

I guess what I'm getting at is, I'm curious how the N5105 would realistically perform as an Emby server, given it's not much different than an N100 (less than 5% according to technical city) and would I be disappointed or notice a difference in performance if I switch to using this after using my current 4790k machine for so many years. 

I don't do much in the way of transcoding, but I'd like to have the ability to if need-be. And I'd probably have a maximum of 5 clients consuming media at the same time, likely less than that on average. 

Only two clients are likely to be accessing my server from outside of my LAN

 

EDIT: On a side note, I also have an aging proxmox server (370M) that's running a few VM's and containers for things like Home Assistant, Heimdall, Jellyseerr, portainer, AdGuard home, Unifi controller, mumble server and probably a few other small services. This machine is starting to fail, so I need to replace it as well and it would be awesome if I could run everything server related on the same machine, but I understand it might be pushing it to expect to run those services as well as emby on the same small machine. 

Edited January 1, 2025 by pmac

[rbjtech 5282]

38 minutes ago, pmac said:

Sorry if my questions may have seemed ignorant, lol. I'm not new to computer hardware in general, I've built a few PC's over the years (though it has been a while since building a new one, so I'm not really up-to-date on current hardware) and I do normally use a combination of userbenchmark and technical city when comparing CPU performance.

I only ask here because I'm not exactly sure how certain hardware may perform in a real-life scenario when being used as an Emby server, when it comes to hardware transcoding and media codec playback, etc. 

While I do own a few mini-PC's, I'm not very well-versed in their performance when being used for something like my use-case for a media server, compared to a classical desktop PC - which I'm more familiar with, hardware-wise. 

Both of the aforementioned processors use an Intel UHD iGPU, and I believe the N5105 has as slightly higher max frequency (+/- 500MHz) on the GPU, and the N100 has a slightly higher CPU boost clock (I don't plan on doing any overclocking on such a SFF PC) and power-wise, I'm not very concerned about since I have a bunch of power hungry PC's running 24/7 as it is, and there's a very miniscule difference in power consumption between these two processesors - especially compared to other machines I have running. 

I guess what I'm getting at is, I'm curious how the N5105 would realistically perform as an Emby server, given it's not much different than an N100 (less than 5% according to technical city) and would I be disappointed or notice a difference in performance if I switch to using this after using my current 4790k machine for so many years. 

I don't do much in the way of transcoding, but I'd like to have the ability to if need-be. And I'd probably have a maximum of 5 clients consuming media at the same time, likely less than that on average. 

Only two clients are likely to be accessing my server from outside of my LAN

 

EDIT: On a side note, I also have an aging proxmox server (370M) that's running a few VM's and containers for things like Home Assistant, Heimdall, Jellyseerr, portainer, AdGuard home, Unifi controller, mumble server and probably a few other small services. This machine is starting to fail, so I need to replace it as well and it would be awesome if I could run everything server related on the same machine, but I understand it might be pushing it to expect to run those services as well as emby on the same small machine. 

No issues asking questions - that's how we all learn.      For VM's - you need threads and memory - so while both these only have '4' threads - unless the vm's are very busy, hitting 100% cpu etc, then they can all share what resources are available.   I would still use the N100.   If it doesn't work out - then simply drop the nvme/ssd into a better machine with more threads.   The 4790K is 'on par' with the N100 CPU wise (8 threads vs 4 but the 4 will be more efficient) but the GPU in the N100 is significantly better (12 Gen vs 7th Gen iGPU).

Edited January 1, 2025 by rbjtech

[pmac 143]

Just now, rbjtech said:

No issues asking questions - that's how we all learn.      For VM's - you need threads and memory - so while both these only have '4' threads - unless the vm's are very busy, hitting 100% cpu etc, then they can all share what resources are available.   I would still use the N100.   If it doesn't work out - then simply drop the nvme/ssd into a better machine with more threads. 

For my current setup I've allocated single cores to most of my containers. Do you think going forward I'd be better off to allocate all cores to everything and just let them use what they need? Or prioritize more cores to services with higher importance? I'm not 100% set on using the same machine for Emby + all my other services; it would just be nice to consolidate everything if possible. 

[rbjtech 5282]

5 minutes ago, pmac said:

For my current setup I've allocated single cores to most of my containers. Do you think going forward I'd be better off to allocate all cores to everything and just let them use what they need? Or prioritize more cores to services with higher importance? I'm not 100% set on using the same machine for Emby + all my other services; it would just be nice to consolidate everything if possible. 

Yes - in this type of environment, let the managing OS do the work of dynamically allocating both memory and threads (and vdisk)

Edited January 1, 2025 by rbjtech

[pmac 143]

3 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

Yes - in this type of environment, let the managing OS do the work of dynamically allocating both memory and threads (and vdisk)

Okay thanks. I'll do some experimenting when I've got time and likely start with Proxmox as the base (it's what I'm familiar with) and then see about how many of my services I can reliably run on the same machine. 

Would running two identical Emby servers side-by-side (I'd likely just import a server backup to the new machine) end up causing me issues for testing? Or would you suggest starting with a new server (with access to the same media) for testing only and then switching over if everything works out ok. 

[rbjtech 5282]

I would clone the entire machine, you may as well use the functionality of proxmox, don't forget to change to a different emby port or they will clash.   Once tested, then a new build is always better (less baggage) but if it works ok, then no real reason to re-do it imo.

[pmac 143]

29 minutes ago, rbjtech said:

I would clone the entire machine, you may as well use the functionality of proxmox, don't forget to change to a different emby port or they will clash.   Once tested, then a new build is always better (less baggage) but if it works ok, then no real reason to re-do it imo.

I had planned on cloning the machine, but it seems like the disk is starting to fail, as I get a lot of read/write errors, so the best I've managed to do is get a backup after a few tries, and I've successfully managed to move the backup to a storage server before running into any errors. I don't want to push it by attempting to clone it, because I assume it will fail. 

[TMCsw 246]

4 hours ago, pmac said:

I had planned on cloning the machine, but it seems like the disk is starting to fail,

Could try this: https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

But generally it's probably best (and cheaper in the long run) to get a newer bigger HDD. (Hope you have a backup?)

Also if you do 'clone' the machine besides changing the ports you should also delete this file '/var/lib/emby/data/device.txt' before starting the new enby-server otherwise you client will be confused 

[pmac 143]

1 hour ago, TMCsw said:

Could try this: https://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm

But generally it's probably best (and cheaper in the long run) to get a newer bigger HDD. (Hope you have a backup?)

Also if you do 'clone' the machine besides changing the ports you should also delete this file '/var/lib/emby/data/device.txt' before starting the new enby-server otherwise you client will be confused 

Yeah, I do have a backup, so I'm not worried about that. I'll just restore it to a new drive. 

Spinrite seems pretty cool though, thanks for sharing!