Old first gen i7 with Linux as Emby server?

[luckyluca 2]

Hi All,

My trusted ser8 8745hs minipc sitting beside my TV is going to be taken by my kid.

Do you think this 16-year-old shoebox PC will work well as a replacement for an Emby server?

250Gb SSD with Debian 13 and Emby server

h55n i7 890 2.93 - 3.20Ghz

8Gb non-dual channel

GeForce 560 1gb

usb 3.0 with the external 12tb media hdd (same as now)

 

I understand that Emby will rely on software transcode with that graphics card. I do watch 2k and 4k content with transcode for subtitles, only one user connected to the server. Is the computer suitable do you think?

 

I also have a Geforce 1080, but I don't think I'm able to take it from another system on account that the 560 is not compatible with that, so I can't swap them.

Thanks

[Dibbes 516]

My 2 cents:

Direct play (no transcoding) will be fine. If clients can play files natively, this setup is sufficient. 1 to 2 light transcodes (720p / low-bitrate 1080p) is possible, but not consistently reliable and I would not recommend that.

• The GTX 560 is effectively useless for hardware transcoding. NVENC support is present (first gen), but is too old to be usable. The GTX1080 will improve that situation in comparison to the 560, but for NVENC support the practical minimum is a GTX1650/1660.
• The CPU will struggle with software transcoding quickly. It is a roughly 15yr old CPU, it lacks modern instruction sets and efficiency.

It depends a little on your use-case though. If your usage looks like mostly direct play (Nvidia Shield, modern TVs, Apple TV), 1 to 2 users max and no 4K transcoding, then it will work. Anything needing 2k/4k transcoding will fail and not gracefully. Expect buffering, failed streams, and CPU pegged at 100%. Standardise media formats (H.264/H.265, no exotic codecs) is an absolute must if you want to avoid transcoding on this hardware.

Basically this system only works if transcoding is avoided.

[luckyluca 2]

Ok thanks. Not what I was hoping to hear

The 8745hs with integrated 740m igpu is running the server just fine. 

On the plus side, from reading online, it appears that the 1080gtx has the same NVENC support as the GTX 1600 series. So, in theory, I could build that shoebox machine with it. 

 

At the moment, I'm looking at alternative mini PC options, maybe slightly less powerful and cheaper than the 8745hs

[TMCsw 263]

 

If you are really looking for a mini PC for Emby, you should get an Intel-based one.

The Intel QuickSync of, say, an I5-1235u is at least 10x better than the 8745hs iGPU and costs about the same.

Yes, the above AMD CPU power is far superior to Intel's, but not for transcoding (media server).

[Dibbes 516]

20 hours ago, luckyluca said:

On the plus side, from reading online, it appears that the 1080gtx has the same NVENC support as the GTX 1600 series. So, in theory, I could build that shoebox machine with it. 

I forgot to mention that not all GTX 1600 series are the same. For example the GTX1650 has two variants, the early ones are GDDR5 and uses Volta NVENC, the later ones are Turing NVENC (Same as the RTX20-series). The latter is what I actually had in mind when mentioning the 1650 before. The 1080 is Pascal NVENC, which is not the same. A later version 1650 is a better media encoder, even though the 1080 is a stronger GPU overall.

However, if you have the 1080 laying around, use it! It's an improvement over the 560. While the quality is slightly worse at the same bitrate, will draw at the very least the double amount of power (both in comparison to the 1650), it can transcode 4k. I'm saying this with the caveat that you should not be trying to do 10-bit HEVC / HDR, HDR tone mapping, container remuxing, subtitle burn-in or any other NVENC heavy things. Emby will then fall back to CPU for tone mapping, which will simply collapse on an i7-890.

With i7-890 + GTX 1080:

• 4K SDR to 1080p -> Yes, reasonably stable, maybe some hick-ups
• 4K HDR to 1080p (tone mapping required) -> No, will struggle or fail
• Multiple 4K streams -> Limited, depends heavily on avoiding tone mapping

Edited April 19 by Dibbes

[luckyluca 2]

Many thanks. I won't use the 1080; I'm going to leave it on my current workstation, which will be demoted to render farm (another story).

 

I can also purchase a second-hand last-gen PC for my son, and keep the existing 8745hs mini PC as an Emby server. It also acts as a Batocera gaming system with dual boot.

About the current Emby server, I'm curious now. How can I test the existing 8745hs minipc to ensure transcoding with and without tonemapping works as expected?

I have a LG hdr TV. Can I force transcoding with and without HDR from the Emby LG app to stress-test the server?

 

[Luke 42395]

2 hours ago, luckyluca said:

Many thanks. I won't use the 1080; I'm going to leave it on my current workstation, which will be demoted to render farm (another story).

 

I can also purchase a second-hand last-gen PC for my son, and keep the existing 8745hs mini PC as an Emby server. It also acts as a Batocera gaming system with dual boot.

About the current Emby server, I'm curious now. How can I test the existing 8745hs minipc to ensure transcoding with and without tonemapping works as expected?

I have a LG hdr TV. Can I force transcoding with and without HDR from the Emby LG app to stress-test the server?

 

HI, yes the playback correction button in the video player can help you do that.

[frankmb 42]

I checked my server for performance while transcoding and tonemapping even though I normally always direct play.

 

I have a Xeon E3-1245 which is quad core 2nd gen Intel (Sandy Bridge) and a Nvidia GTX 1050 2GB in an Unraid server running Emby

I can transcode a 4K HEVC HDR @ 80Mbps movie to 4K H264 SDR @ 60Mbps using hardware transcoding and hardware tonemapping.

The  GPU utilisation reported is 55% and 760MB/2GB RAM used.

It works fine.

Edited April 28 by frankmb

[luckyluca 2]

In terms of mini-pcs, or smaller compact pcs, going with Intel as you suggested,

what do you recommend with a very strong iGpu for gaming? (I boot in Debian for Emby server, Windows11 for the occasional old PC game, Batocera for retro gaming).

I'm familiar with the AMD ones, but not Intel's

[RanmaCanada 508]

4 hours ago, luckyluca said:

In terms of mini-pcs, or smaller compact pcs, going with Intel as you suggested,

what do you recommend with a very strong iGpu for gaming? (I boot in Debian for Emby server, Windows11 for the occasional old PC game, Batocera for retro gaming).

I'm familiar with the AMD ones, but not Intel's

Anything with the newer Intel Arc graphics, but bear in mind that Batocera support for Arc is a crap shoot. You would need to join their discord to get actual information as they have decided to gatekeep it there, and have refused to update any of their wiki pages. It's disgusting they've decided to do this as discord is useless for support. You also don't need to boot to Windows, you can use WINE or Proton, and you could just use Retroarch for your emulation needs instead of Batocera. Batocera is usually months if not years behind, and should only be used on a dedicated machine that has the proper hardware, and if you're ok with emulators being outdated.