First build for Plex and light gaming

[kodiak211]

I'm looking to build my first computer. But I'm not sure what my priority should be, (i.e cpu, or gpu) for what the computer will be mainly used for. I want something that runs fast, and powerful. Light gaming, but mostly media streaming and transcoding. I want to be able to run Plex, in full 1080p, on multiple devices, without a hitch in rendering, while also using the computer normily, without it slowing down. I'm sure RAM also plays a part in all of this.

[Peskanova]

1 hour ago, kodiak211 said:

I'm looking to build my first computer. But I'm not sure what my priority should be, (i.e cpu, or gpu) for what the computer will be mainly used for. I want something that runs fast, and powerful. Light gaming, but mostly media streaming and transcoding. I want to be able to run Plex, in full 1080p, on multiple devices, without a hitch in rendering, while also using the computer normily, without it slowing down. I'm sure RAM also plays a part in all of this.

Put a 8400 + 1050ti with 16gb ram , that's low budget 1080p gaming 6 cores

[Jtalk4456]

1 hour ago, kodiak211 said:

I'm looking to build my first computer. But I'm not sure what my priority should be, (i.e cpu, or gpu) for what the computer will be mainly used for. I want something that runs fast, and powerful. Light gaming, but mostly media streaming and transcoding. I want to be able to run Plex, in full 1080p, on multiple devices, without a hitch in rendering, while also using the computer normily, without it slowing down. I'm sure RAM also plays a part in all of this.

So first off, AMD for the processor. While gaming will benefit more from the intel processors single core performance, it sounds like that's not your priority. For the streaming and transcoding, AMD's chips really shine right now. I am NOT an expert on media encoding and editing by any means, but my assumption would be a Ryzen 5 would do it for you. a 2600 at 170 will net you 3.4 base up to 3.9 turbo, 6 cores 12 threads, and a wraith stealth cooler. For an extra 40 or so, you can get the 2600X with a base of 3.6 up to 4.2 boost and a wraith spire cooler. it's 95 vs 65 w and costs more, but with a better clock speed and better cooler included. It's up to you whether that's worth it.

I can't imagine needing much more than that, but again verify that with someone who does what you do. I don't know the program requirements, I'm just assuming they need more gpu than cpu from my knowledge.

Both require a GPU, but you should be getting one for this build anyways. depending on your budget, you have a lot of choices here. If we're going cheap, I'd find a 1050ti 4gb between 150-200. If you can afford more, I'd look for a 1060 or 1070. A 1060 6gb should run you about 300 right now and a 1070 8gb should run you about 400 right now.

Cases are a personal thing, you can spend as little as $30-40 or several hundred or several thousand. most people I see building tend to find decent quality around 80-120, but there is good quality in cheaper ones too. 

PSU, id stick 400-500W. Those are plenty for these requirements and still provide some headroom. Alot of people like to go 750-1000 to have the most headroom, but this is way overkill. If you want to spend more on the psu, put  your money into a top tier brand and get as high on the 80plus rating scale as you can before you just get higher wattage

Edit, forgot to mention ram. While the gaming should be fine with 8gb, the editing and transcoding will eat your ram like a bowl of nuts. grab 16gb, 3000 MHz is the sweet spot right now

[kodiak211]

7 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

So first off, AMD for the processor. While gaming will benefit more from the intel processors single core performance, it sounds like that's not your priority. For the streaming and transcoding, AMD's chips really shine right now. I am NOT an expert on media encoding and editing by any means, but my assumption would be a Ryzen 5 would do it for you. a 2600 at 170 will net you 3.4 base up to 3.9 turbo, 6 cores 12 threads, and a wraith stealth cooler. For an extra 40 or so, you can get the 2600X with a base of 3.6 up to 4.2 boost and a wraith spire cooler. it's 95 vs 65 w and costs more, but with a better clock speed and better cooler included. It's up to you whether that's worth it.

I can't imagine needing much more than that, but again verify that with someone who does what you do. I don't know the program requirements, I'm just assuming they need more gpu than cpu from my knowledge.

Both require a GPU, but you should be getting one for this build anyways. depending on your budget, you have a lot of choices here. If we're going cheap, I'd find a 1050ti 4gb between 150-200. If you can afford more, I'd look for a 1060 or 1070. A 1060 6gb should run you about 300 right now and a 1070 8gb should run you about 400 right now.

Cases are a personal thing, you can spend as little as $30-40 or several hundred or several thousand. most people I see building tend to find decent quality around 80-120, but there is good quality in cheaper ones too. 

PSU, id stick 400-500W. Those are plenty for these requirements and still provide some headroom. Alot of people like to go 750-1000 to have the most headroom, but this is way overkill. If you want to spend more on the psu, put  your money into a top tier brand and get as high on the 80plus rating scale as you can before you just get higher wattage

Edit, forgot to mention ram. While the gaming should be fine with 8gb, the editing and transcoding will eat your ram like a bowl of nuts. grab 16gb, 3000 MHz is the sweet spot right now

I wanted to say thank you for the suggestions. At the moment, I don't have a whole lot of time to ask questions. I'll be back on here later.

[Crunchy Dragon]

@kodiak211 your topic has been split out of LTT Official and has its own dedicated thread.

[TraskJ]

7 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

So first off, AMD for the processor. While gaming will benefit more from the intel processors single core performance, it sounds like that's not your priority. For the streaming and transcoding, AMD's chips really shine right now. I am NOT an expert on media encoding and editing by any means, but my assumption would be a Ryzen 5 would do it for you. a 2600 at 170 will net you 3.4 base up to 3.9 turbo, 6 cores 12 threads, and a wraith stealth cooler. For an extra 40 or so, you can get the 2600X with a base of 3.6 up to 4.2 boost and a wraith spire cooler. it's 95 vs 65 w and costs more, but with a better clock speed and better cooler included. It's up to you whether that's worth it.

I can't imagine needing much more than that, but again verify that with someone who does what you do. I don't know the program requirements, I'm just assuming they need more gpu than cpu from my knowledge.

Both require a GPU, but you should be getting one for this build anyways. depending on your budget, you have a lot of choices here. If we're going cheap, I'd find a 1050ti 4gb between 150-200. If you can afford more, I'd look for a 1060 or 1070. A 1060 6gb should run you about 300 right now and a 1070 8gb should run you about 400 right now.

Cases are a personal thing, you can spend as little as $30-40 or several hundred or several thousand. most people I see building tend to find decent quality around 80-120, but there is good quality in cheaper ones too. 

PSU, id stick 400-500W. Those are plenty for these requirements and still provide some headroom. Alot of people like to go 750-1000 to have the most headroom, but this is way overkill. If you want to spend more on the psu, put  your money into a top tier brand and get as high on the 80plus rating scale as you can before you just get higher wattage

Edit, forgot to mention ram. While the gaming should be fine with 8gb, the editing and transcoding will eat your ram like a bowl of nuts. grab 16gb, 3000 MHz is the sweet spot right now

I agree with this guy. Go for LOTS of CPU cores if you want to be good for media streaming/transcoding. It may also be worthwhile to pick up a dedicated network card, but that's not my area of expertise, so I'm not sure if motherboard ports will be fast enough. One place I disagree is on pricing. If you want to run the Plex server AND use the system simultaneously, you'll want 16gb of RAM (at least, preferably 32 just to be safe. My 16gb of RAM disappears real quick just from playing Overwatch, streaming, and having some tabs open in my browser) and more cores on the processor. Shoot for something in the R7 lineup. I recommend the upgrade because of your mention of multitasking. 

 

EDIT: I didn't comment on the GPU because I don't know much about how transcoding media and playing a game at the same time will affect a GPU. I would guess you'll want something beefier than a 1050ti, but again, someone more qualified should comment on that area. 

[kodiak211]

11 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

So first off, AMD for the processor. While gaming will benefit more from the intel processors single core performance, it sounds like that's not your priority. For the streaming and transcoding, AMD's chips really shine right now. I am NOT an expert on media encoding and editing by any means, but my assumption would be a Ryzen 5 would do it for you. a 2600 at 170 will net you 3.4 base up to 3.9 turbo, 6 cores 12 threads, and a wraith stealth cooler. For an extra 40 or so, you can get the 2600X with a base of 3.6 up to 4.2 boost and a wraith spire cooler. it's 95 vs 65 w and costs more, but with a better clock speed and better cooler included. It's up to you whether that's worth it.

I can't imagine needing much more than that, but again verify that with someone who does what you do. I don't know the program requirements, I'm just assuming they need more gpu than cpu from my knowledge.

Both require a GPU, but you should be getting one for this build anyways. depending on your budget, you have a lot of choices here. If we're going cheap, I'd find a 1050ti 4gb between 150-200. If you can afford more, I'd look for a 1060 or 1070. A 1060 6gb should run you about 300 right now and a 1070 8gb should run you about 400 right now.

Cases are a personal thing, you can spend as little as $30-40 or several hundred or several thousand. most people I see building tend to find decent quality around 80-120, but there is good quality in cheaper ones too. 

PSU, id stick 400-500W. Those are plenty for these requirements and still provide some headroom. Alot of people like to go 750-1000 to have the most headroom, but this is way overkill. If you want to spend more on the psu, put  your money into a top tier brand and get as high on the 80plus rating scale as you can before you just get higher wattage

Edit, forgot to mention ram. While the gaming should be fine with 8gb, the editing and transcoding will eat your ram like a bowl of nuts. grab 16gb, 3000 MHz is the sweet spot right now

I've been wanting to do this for awhile. My original set up, was with a Asus 4300 server. It didn't have any Plex support, so it ran off my computer. That thing, after 3 years, ended up going into a boot loop. And with no practical way of hooking it up to a monitor, I had to send it to Asus for repairs. Had it for about enough year, before it went into a boot loop again. That moment, I said to myself, I need to build my own, so I can fix any problems with it. But I ended up getting a qnap, with plex support. I really have no trouble with the qnap. Tho, it's still not powerful enough to stream 1080p on multiple devices. It sometimes bogs down on one device streaming at 1080p.

 

My current computer is starting to show it's age. So my plan, is to build something that's basically a server, and home computer with enough power to be used as both at the same time.

 

It won't be running like this constantly. But I want the option, and capability.

 

I was already thinking something with more then 4 cores. So I was kind of looking at AMD. But my first experiences with that chipset, wasn't a good one. But I'm seeing, as of recently, they are competing with Intel.

 

I don't want to break the bank, but I also don't want to be cheap about it.

 

I'm thinking of using a SSD to run all the programs, and a array of HDD's for storage.

[Jtalk4456]

13 hours ago, kodiak211 said:

I've been wanting to do this for awhile. My original set up, was with a Asus 4300 server. It didn't have any Plex support, so it ran off my computer. That thing, after 3 years, ended up going into a boot loop. And with no practical way of hooking it up to a monitor, I had to send it to Asus for repairs. Had it for about enough year, before it went into a boot loop again. That moment, I said to myself, I need to build my own, so I can fix any problems with it. But I ended up getting a qnap, with plex support. I really have no trouble with the qnap. Tho, it's still not powerful enough to stream 1080p on multiple devices. It sometimes bogs down on one device streaming at 1080p.

 

My current computer is starting to show it's age. So my plan, is to build something that's basically a server, and home computer with enough power to be used as both at the same time.

 

It won't be running like this constantly. But I want the option, and capability.

 

I was already thinking something with more then 4 cores. So I was kind of looking at AMD. But my first experiences with that chipset, wasn't a good one. But I'm seeing, as of recently, they are competing with Intel.

 

I don't want to break the bank, but I also don't want to be cheap about it.

 

I'm thinking of using a SSD to run all the programs, and a array of HDD's for storage.

I'm personally a fan of raid 5, but how you want to set up your array is up to you. for the ssd I wouldn't go less than 240, preferrably 500 if you can afford it. I got a 240 and I'm regretting not getting bigger

[PurplDrank]

14 hours ago, kodiak211 said:

I've been wanting to do this for awhile. My original set up, was with a Asus 4300 server. It didn't have any Plex support, so it ran off my computer. That thing, after 3 years, ended up going into a boot loop. And with no practical way of hooking it up to a monitor, I had to send it to Asus for repairs. Had it for about enough year, before it went into a boot loop again. That moment, I said to myself, I need to build my own, so I can fix any problems with it. But I ended up getting a qnap, with plex support. I really have no trouble with the qnap. Tho, it's still not powerful enough to stream 1080p on multiple devices. It sometimes bogs down on one device streaming at 1080p.

 

My current computer is starting to show it's age. So my plan, is to build something that's basically a server, and home computer with enough power to be used as both at the same time.

 

It won't be running like this constantly. But I want the option, and capability.

 

I was already thinking something with more then 4 cores. So I was kind of looking at AMD. But my first experiences with that chipset, wasn't a good one. But I'm seeing, as of recently, they are competing with Intel.

 

I don't want to break the bank, but I also don't want to be cheap about it.

 

I'm thinking of using a SSD to run all the programs, and a array of HDD's for storage.

If you do not want to break the bank AMD is common for price and performance.

 

a 2600 would do just fine for you. like the above people said. Also, if you ever decide to upgrade in the future the AM4 boards will be supported for quite sometime. The intel z370 boards however may or may not be supported, it really depends on the upcoming intel i9 processors. so if you do go intel, there may come a time where you will need a whole new build if you want to upgrade.

[kodiak211]

Thanks for the help guys. I think i'm going to go with a AMD 1800X, and build it from there.

[PurplDrank]

5 hours ago, kodiak211 said:

Thanks for the help guys. I think i'm going to go with a AMD 1800X, and build it from there.

I didn't realize you were american based on your avatar . Here in the states theres a store called microcenter that have cpu and motherboard bundles together. look into that