cheap/fastest ebay cpu for a plex server

[qwertywarrior]

hello all

 

im helping a friend build a plex server and after researching it seems more cores are better when it comes to many users who are transcoding .GPUs are a no go since they have many limitations .

 

after watching linus's last video where he was able to get a fast cpu for such a cheap price, he also added that you can even cheaper with two E5-2670 v2 CPU and a mobo which comes out under 200$ for the whole thing .

 

so i have 2 questions 

 

1. are there much better performance at a total cost of around 500$

2 after using xeon based boards their can be some odd requirements such as a necessity to use ECC ram what kind of road blocks might i hit ?

 

regards 

[jaslion]

You can buy a whole server/workstation for that money usually with dual xeon in them if you look around enough on ebay. The workstations tend to be quiet and cost a little more but still easy to get dual 8 core xeon v2 systems like a hp z620 if you wish. This will be cheaper than buying all parts normally.

[silentdragon95]

I suppose the cheapest option if you want more than 8 cores is still LGA 2011 - do be careful though, there are two versions of LGA 2011, one using DDR3 ("X79") and one unsing DDR4 ("X99") which are not compatible with each other. The E5-2670 v2 mentioned by Linus falls into the first category.

 

You don't necessarily have to use ECC memory with these CPUs and generally server motherboards will also work with non-ECC memory just fine. However if you do buy a used server motherboard and a Xeon CPU, using registered ECC memory is not a bad idea anyway as it can be had a lot cheaper on Ebay than regular RAM.

[qwertywarrior]

2 minutes ago, silentdragon95 said:

I suppose the cheapest option if you want more than 8 cores is still LGA 2011 - do be careful though, there are two versions of LGA 2011, one using DDR3 ("X79") and one unsing DDR4 ("X99") which are not compatible with each other. The E5-2670 v2 mentioned by Linus falls into the first category.

 

You don't necessarily have to use ECC memory with these CPUs and generally server motherboards will also work with non-ECC memory just fine. However if you do buy a used server motherboard and a Xeon CPU, using registered ECC memory is not a bad idea anyway as it can be had a lot cheaper on Ebay than regular RAM.

thank you for this info . i will do my proper homework once i start shopping around . just wanted to ask firs . thanks again 

[Pixel5]

generally this old hardware only makes any sense if you are ok with high power consumption.

 

for your budget i would get an i3 10100 and use the iGPU for transcoding.

[qwertywarrior]

Just now, Pixel5 said:

generally this old hardware only makes any sense if you are ok with high power consumption.

 

for your budget i would get an i3 10100 and use the iGPU for transcoding.

power consumption is not an issue and the number of users  that will be on it will max out the 10100 quickly . currently taking a look a refurbished HP Z workstations 

[CerealExperimentsLain]

1 hour ago, qwertywarrior said:

after watching linus's last video where he was able to get a fast cpu for such a cheap price, he also added that you can even cheaper with two E5-2670 v2 CPU and a mobo which comes out under 200$ for the whole thing .

I have a single E5-2697v2 in my main UnRAID machine using a consumer X79 board.  It does transcoding pretty well on multiple streams.  In Cinebench, despite both being 12 cores, it's only half as fast as my consumer Ryzen 9 3900X.  That said the Xeon was only USD$200 in 2019 and it's closer to $140 now.  3900X?  Not so much.

But the real pain is the motherboard, I already had the X79 mobo on hand so it was just a matter of the CPU.  The mobos can be the expensive (Or broken/weird Chinese off brand).

[Pixel5]

1 hour ago, qwertywarrior said:

power consumption is not an issue and the number of users  that will be on it will max out the 10100 quickly . currently taking a look a refurbished HP Z workstations 

how many users are you expecting to require transcoding from 4k down to a lower resolution at the same time?

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, qwertywarrior said:

hello all

 

im helping a friend build a plex server and after researching it seems more cores are better when it comes to many users who are transcoding .GPUs are a no go since they have many limitations .

What limitations do you mean? Search YouTube for sloth TV, he did a test using a cheap quadro card and the number of transcoding was much higher than cpu transcoding. 

[qwertywarrior]

On 7/21/2021 at 5:24 PM, Pixel5 said:

how many users are you expecting to require transcoding from 4k down to a lower resolution at the same time?

4k will not be allowed to be transcoded .

Only 1080p files and below can be transcoded

 

Number of users will begin to increase . Max 20 users

[Pixel5]

50 minutes ago, qwertywarrior said:

4k will not be allowed to be transcoded .

Only 1080p files and below can be transcoded

 

Number of users will begin to increase . Max 20 users

well then an i3 10100 is perfectly fine for you as the igpu can transcode 23 1080p streams at the same time without dropping frames.

 

With 4k its only 5 streams and the 6th one would start dropping frames thats why i was asking for the 4k content specifically.

[DogKnight]

On 7/21/2021 at 9:45 PM, silentdragon95 said:

I suppose the cheapest option if you want more than 8 cores is still LGA 2011 - do be careful though, there are two versions of LGA 2011, one using DDR3 ("X79") and one unsing DDR4 ("X99") which are not compatible with each other. The E5-2670 v2 mentioned by Linus falls into the first category.

 

You don't necessarily have to use ECC memory with these CPUs and generally server motherboards will also work with non-ECC memory just fine. However if you do buy a used server motherboard and a Xeon CPU, using registered ECC memory is not a bad idea anyway as it can be had a lot cheaper on Ebay than regular RAM.

 

To elaborate on this, the X99 chipset is the newer of the two and uses the LGA 2011-3 socket. Whereas the prior generation of HEDT platforms was X79, and uses the LGA 2011 socket. 

 

A nice cheap option for a X99 build is the Xeon E5-2678 v3. 12 cores, 2.5ghz base, 3.3ghz boost. You can get these on Ali Express fairly cheap. I use one in my home lab server. It was an OEM SKU, essentially a made to order variant for a large customer of Intel. A good list of X99 based Xeon CPU's can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_Haswell-based_Xeon_microprocessors#Xeon_E5-2678_v3

The biggest hurdle with an X99 build is that the motherboards can still be rather pricey. But definitely some great price to performance options available. 

For a rough performance comparison for pure CPU compute, the E5-2678 v3 got a Cinebench R20 score of 3842 points. Which is above the average Ryzen 5 3600 in stock form. Cinebench is obviously not an all encompassing indicator of performance, but it gives you a comparison point.