Old Scrap Server Looking For New(er) Parts Recommendation

radionerd · March 23, 2020

I'm looking at upgrading my home server. Right now was a bunch of scrap components thrown together that I had lying around.

AMD Phenom II X6 1075T
2x8GB DDR2 667MHz
Crucial M4 128GB SSD
2x4TB Seagate Barracuda (SATA-III drives on a SATA-II interface)
Windows Server 2008 R2

I initially used it as a file server. Then I added a GeForce 750Ti that I got in a trade from my friend. Adding a HDMI dummy plug and upgrading the OS to Windows Server 2016 and it has now become a decent headless Plex Server.

However, I want it to do more. It serves up to 1080p video just fine, but I want to start putting UHD content on it. The only issue it has right now is that I have a significant amount of anime content that this thing just chokes on. This content is all subtitled and causes the server to fall back to CPU transcoding. The 750Ti is just decoding video. Worse even, some of this content is in H.264 10-bit format and the 750Ti won't even touch it. It is very picky on what it decodes and encodes in hardware.

I'm already planning on adding more drives. But I was wondering if I should upgrade the core components to something more modern. Plex seems to like Intel QuickSync for decoding and encoding. If I do that, what would be the minimum CPU I should get? Would a Core i3-9100 cut it or am I going to need to shell out and get a Core i7-8700K? Should I scrap the GPU at that point, or could I put in a 10 series Pascal card? If I put in the Pascal card, would a cheap Zen processor work just fine? Would a Ryzen chip be powerful enough on its own to just muscle through it without even needing the GPU?

I plan on buying additional Seagate 6TB IronWolf drives later on.

Also, I'm looking into having the server perform additional tasks since it's usually on 24/7. Steam caching seemed cool, but I don't think it really is a deal breaker since I only have my main rig and a gigabit fiber connection. PiHole works great on my Raspberry Pi. I was thinking of running it on here and making my server do DCHP (could I even get it to do full router functions locked in a closet while my current router is in the living room?). VPN and external video serving would also be amazing.

vano411 · March 24, 2020

I would argue that an i3 would be overkill, unless your server's in super high demand and you have the bandwidth to serve.

I run a headless Plex media server with a Pentium G5500 (dual core with SMT) and it has no problem delivering 4-5 1080p streams simultaneously. It works with UHD content as well but locally. The only bottleneck I run into is my network connection.