NAS APUs

[Nicolai Mortensen]

Hi everyone.

 

I'm looking at APU's to use in a NAS server I'm planning on making, and I've found a couple of Intel APUs I like the initial look of. I'm going to use the NAS for archive for work and my own time, aswell as running a plex media server. ECC might not be entirely needed, but I might aswell look into it, since the work archive folder will be important. I'm open to not using ECC if it's not needed for this kind of application (I'm new to the entire server thing and I'm only just learning about it).

 

The first one is an i3-9300T, because of it's ECC support, but I'm not entirely sure which chipset I need to pair it up with, to be able to take advantage of the ECC?

 

The second one is an i3-10300T, no ECC, but it's 10th gen (not sure if there's any advantages there).

 

The third is an i5-10600T, still no ECC, but a couple of more cores.

 

I'm going to use Intel Quick Sync for hardware accelerated video transcoding for plex and the power consumption for the entire system is as important as everything else. My question is, which of the APUs would serve my needs best?

[Electronics Wizardy]

How many plex streams do you need to transcode at once? The i3 should be able to more than enough streams for most home users.

 

Id get the normal non t skus, you don't really save much power, esp at idle where the system will be most of the time.

 

Id probably go 9100 here,

 

You need c242 or c246 chipset based board to use ecc, and unbuffered ecc(registerd ram will not work)

 

A board like this will work well https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X11SCZ-F

 

There are lots of variants of this board dpeending on what io you need and form factor, and other featuers like impi.

[Nicolai Mortensen]

38 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id get the normal non t skus, you don't really save much power, esp at idle where the system will be most of the time. 

I'm only planning on 1 stream, at the most 2, but I'd like to run unraid and in case of a parity rebuild, I'm thinking the extra umpf could help out on that process? 

 

I'm going with the T series mostly because of it's lower tdp, should allow me to run a passive cooler and use the airflow through the case, right? Planning on a 3u rack mount I've gotten for free. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Nicolai Mortensen said:

I'm only planning on 1 stream, at the most 2, but I'd like to run unraid and in case of a parity rebuild, I'm thinking the extra umpf could help out on that process? 

 

I'm going with the T series mostly because of it's lower tdp, should allow me to run a passive cooler and use the airflow through the case, right? Planning on a 3u rack mount I've gotten for free. 

the parity and nas parts need very little cpu power. You will be almost always disk or network limited. CPU won't limit you at all for pairty

 

The t skus only lower tdp, not idle power consumption, and thats what matters here, this cpu will be basically always idle. You can also lower the tdp later if you want, but I don't think it would be needed.

 

A single stream or two won't really even need quick sync, any semi modern cpu should handle these tasks. If you want to save a bit you can get a bit older of a system on ebay, like a e3 v3 system.

[Nicolai Mortensen]

25 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

The t skus only lower tdp, not idle power consumption, and thats what matters here, this cpu will be basically always idle. You can also lower the tdp later if you want, but I don't think it would be needed.

Quick Sync will be working overtime in my setup, here I'm allowed to save a copy of a video borrowed from the public library and ripping that and converting it to h.264 will be a perfect task for Intel Quick Sync. 

 

But how would I go about lowering the tdp? I was already planning on not enabling turbo boost and just run it at base clock speeds. 

 

I've been advice against undervolting due to some security issues with Intel processors and I don't want to use a blown fan, in fact I just saw a ltt video today about a thermal siphon cooler that looks interesting. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Nicolai Mortensen said:

But how would I go about lowering the tdp? I was already planning on not enabling turbo boost and just run it at base clock speeds. 

Really don't worry about this, the chips don't run that hot anyways, but you can in the bios

 

1 minute ago, Nicolai Mortensen said:

've been advice against undervolting due to some security issues with Intel processors and I don't want to use a blown fan, in fact I just saw a ltt video today about a thermal siphon cooler that looks interesting. 

Id just use the stock cooler. It should be silent with those low power chips.

 

2 minutes ago, Nicolai Mortensen said:

Quick Sync will be working overtime in my setup, here I'm allowed to save a copy of a video borrowed from the public library and ripping that and converting it to h.264 will be a perfect task for Intel Quick Sync. 

 

Even with cpu encoding, it should convert a video very quicky to h264, and one thing to note is normally quicksync is a lower quality

[Nicolai Mortensen]

4 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Really don't worry about this, the chips don't run that hot anyways, but you can in the bios

 

Id just use the stock cooler. It should be silent with those low power chips.

 

Even with cpu encoding, it should convert a video very quicky to h264, and one thing to note is normally quicksync is a lower quality

Okay, so what affect the the performance of software encoding the most, cores or clock speeds? 

 

I'll be replacing the stock fan no matter what, I've gone to great lengths looking at silent and efficient options of creating sufficient airflow to cool the hard drives, and I want to utilise the airflow for the apu as well, because I only have space in my living room. With a few modifications to the case and to my furniture, it'll fit instead of one of the drawers. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

48 minutes ago, Nicolai Mortensen said:

Okay, so what affect the the performance of software encoding the most, cores or clock speeds? 

 

I'll be replacing the stock fan no matter what, I've gone to great lengths looking at silent and efficient options of creating sufficient airflow to cool the hard drives, and I want to utilise the airflow for the apu as well, because I only have space in my living room. With a few modifications to the case and to my furniture, it'll fit instead of one of the drawers. 

The stock cooler is silent on those chips, you really don't need to replace it, or atleat try the stock cooler first. they dont use much power

 

Normlly h264 encoders scale pretty well with core cound, to a point.

 

But I think. i3 9100 is probably your best pick here.