jewbrad Posted November 11, 2017 Share Posted November 11, 2017 I am planning to build my first NAS with unraid and plan on using plex, sonarr, radarr, VMs, and a few more things and wonder if i5-8400 is overkill or going with a i3 coffee lake, kaby lake (i5 or i3) or skylake (i50r i3) will fit my needs. Quote Link to comment
tdallen Posted November 11, 2017 Share Posted November 11, 2017 Hello and welcome - The Core i5-8400 is a Coffee Lake 6 core, non-hyperthreaded processor that runs at 11,412 Passmarks . The Coffee Lake i3's are 4 core, non-hyperthreaded processors as are the Sky Lake and Kaby Lake i5's. The Sky Lake and Kaby Lake i3's are two core, hyperthreaded processors. It's a little hard to make a recommendation. unRAID can run on any of the CPUs you mention as a basic NAS. But here are some reactions to your other requirements: Sonarr, Radarr - any of the CPUs you've mentioned will be fine. Plex - depends on whether you will be doing any transcoding. If you aren't transcoding, again any of the CPUs you mentioned will be fine. If you are transcoding with the CPU the rule of thumb is 2,000 Passmarks per transcoded 1080p stream, and it can be more - plus you want 1-2,000 Passmarks for unRAID itself. The i5-8400 would be fine for several streams, the other CPUs are one or more steps down in transcoding ability. VMs - That's the wildcard. If you run lightweight VMs that can share CPU with each other or unRAID then Ok - but if you run heavy weight VMs that want dedicated cores you can run out of cores very fast with only 4 cores or two hyperthreaded cores. It's hard to recommend a 2 or 4 core processor for anyone who wants to do anything more than play with VMs. As a matter of fact, even the 8400 might not be enough depending on what you want to do. Hope that helps... Quote Link to comment
Zonediver Posted December 9, 2017 Share Posted December 9, 2017 (edited) If you plan to use Plex(transcoding) "and" VMs, then take at least an i7. For VMs i would recommend a Xeon with ECC-RAM. I use an i7 (10.000 Passmarks) "only" for Plex - and this is brief because of transcoding. Edited December 9, 2017 by Zonediver Quote Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted December 9, 2017 Share Posted December 9, 2017 1 hour ago, Zonediver said: If you plan to use Plex(transcoding) "and" VMs, then take at least an i7. For VMs i would recommend a Xeon with ECC-RAM. I use an i7 (10.000 Passmarks) "only" for Plex - and this is brief because of transcoding. It won't take an i7 at all. Use QuickSync hardware transcoding in Plex and you can do a LOT with a basic Pentium chip. I've had 5x 1080p transcodes running at one time on a Celeron N3160, and only had 20% CPU use. If you're still using CPU to transcode, you're frankly doing it wrong. Quote Link to comment
Zonediver Posted December 9, 2017 Share Posted December 9, 2017 (edited) 1 hour ago, HellDiverUK said: It won't take an i7 at all. Use QuickSync hardware transcoding in Plex and you can do a LOT with a basic Pentium chip. I've had 5x 1080p transcodes running at one time on a Celeron N3160, and only had 20% CPU use. If you're still using CPU to transcode, you're frankly doing it wrong. No - i cant recommend this QuickSync crap... Maybe in the future but not yet. Read this about the limitations - especially under unRAID and Docker https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/115002178853-Using-Hardware-Accelerated-Streaming Edited December 9, 2017 by Zonediver Quote Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted December 9, 2017 Share Posted December 9, 2017 QuickSync works great for me under unRAID/Docker. If you're doing transcoding with QS that looks bad, then you're already transcoding the original down too much. 1080p content looks great transcoded to 720p usng QS. It looks like shit at 480p or lower, but hey guess what? 480p and lower looks like shit anyway! You haven't really lost anything, but you did it quicker with less power consumption. Quote Link to comment
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