New build NAS CPU - i5-12600K vs i5-14500 ? 12 gen CPU vs a 14 gen CPU???

[Armymen]

I have a chance to get one of those 3 CPU :

   i5-12400 6-Core (6P) for 198$ CAD   

   i5-12600K 10-Core (6P+4E) for 244$ CAD

   i5-14500 14-Core (6P+8E) for 339$ CAD

     

 

NAS will run UNRAID, Windows VM, Plex Transcoding 4k (travel a lots).

Current setup :

    Asus Pro WS w680-ace

    64 GB DDR5 ECC

 

My questions are :

What CPU to get ? I'm thinking longevity and long term for my NAS. Will I go longer using a 14 gen (14 Core) CPU instead of a 12 gen (6-10 Core) CPU?

14 Gen more core don't mean would be better ? 

How is UNRAID deal with P and E core ?

the K is not overkill for a NAS ? lol

 

[LIGISTX]

The 12600k is EXTREME overkill for a NAS. You can easily get an i3 and it would be plenty. 

[johnt]

4 minutes ago, LIGISTX said:

The 12600k is EXTREME overkill for a NAS. You can easily get an i3 and it would be plenty. 

Plex transcoding can be tough on a cpu. I would go with the 12600k since it’s cheaper with the same P core count. 

[emosun]

if its just a file server then you can use almost any modern cpu and choice shouldn't matter much

[tkitch]

how many transcode streams do you plan to run at once?  

and will it have a gpu?

[LIGISTX]

1 hour ago, johnt said:

Plex transcoding can be tough on a cpu. I would go with the 12600k since it’s cheaper with the same P core count. 

Igpu should make quick work of transcode, but regardless, 1080p transcode doesn’t take much at all even if you do it on CPU. Trying to transcode 4k isn’t super viable anyways, but it can certainly be done. 
 

I used to run my entire homelab on an i3 6100, and my Ubuntu VM which ran Plex only got 2 threads of the 4 total. It could transcode multiple 1080p to 720p movies at once… a 12600k would run circles around a 6100.

 

I posted some info about this the other day, I would give this a look. This was done on my current homelab, and my Plex VM gets 6 threads…. And my e5-2600 threads are much, much slower then 12600k threads. 
 

The post I linked didn’t have CPU usage from within the Plex VM itself, so see below for a 4k to 720p transcode on 6 threads of my much slower CPU… it’s transcoding at over 1:1 speed, and has headroom to spare. This is not the most intense 4k video as the bitrate is pretty low for 4k content, this matches up to the detail I provided in the linked post regarding the 4k bitrate of this file. 
 

 

A 12600k for a NAS is wild overkill. 

[Queen Chrysalis]

This should not be a new PC.  Any old computer from the last decade will handle this easily and you'll spend $20.

[m9x3mos]

3 hours ago, Armymen said:

I have a chance to get one of those 3 CPU :

   i5-12400 6-Core (6P) for 198$ CAD   

   i5-12600K 10-Core (6P+4E) for 244$ CAD

   i5-14500 14-Core (6P+8E) for 339$ CAD

     

 

NAS will run UNRAID, Windows VM, Plex Transcoding 4k (travel a lots).

Current setup :

    Asus Pro WS w680-ace

    64 GB DDR5 ECC

 

My questions are :

What CPU to get ? I'm thinking longevity and long term for my NAS. Will I go longer using a 14 gen (14 Core) CPU instead of a 12 gen (6-10 Core) CPU?

14 Gen more core don't mean would be better ? 

How is UNRAID deal with P and E core ?

the K is not overkill for a NAS ? lol

 

Unraid doesn't fully utilize the e cores from what I remember and they will just be additional ones without hyper threading to it. 

Depending on what the windows vm is going to be expected to do and if you want to isolate those cores or not. 

If it isn't much the 12400 would be fine. 

If it is going to be high work load or you are isolating, go faster. 

[johnt]

3 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

Igpu should make quick work of transcode, but regardless,

 

3 hours ago, LIGISTX said:

A 12600k for a NAS is wild overkill. 

 

I run my Plex server from a Windows PC and the usage always spikes to 100% during transcoding. I don't see the fate of a 12600k being much different.

 

I'm getting curious about unraid and truenas just to see the differences.

[LIGISTX]

23 minutes ago, johnt said:

 

 

I run my Plex server from a Windows PC and the usage always spikes to 100% during transcoding. I don't see the fate of a 12600k being much different.

 

I'm getting curious about unraid and truenas just to see the differences.

Does it spike to 100% and then quickly fall off…? I assume it does as it’s trying to build up a buffer. 
 

I would recommend actually clicking on the link I provided and reading what I wrote in the previous post. I include screenshots of what I am transcoding, bitrates of the files, etc.

 

I didn’t include the VM’s CPU usage in the linked post, only the post in this thread where is how CPU usage across the 6 threads, but we can roughly assume 6 threads out of the 28 available on my machine would mean if that VM was running with all 6 threads pinned, it would show roughly 20% usage in Proxmox WebUI (plus a few % for overhead of Proxmox and the other VM’s), so you can gauge your math from there. 

[leadeater]

Just to add to what @LIGISTX said if you can't do the transcode on an older ~6 core cpu then GPU transcode is the correct solution rather than a costly, high power usage, CPU. You don't even need a good or new GPU, just anything good enough like a GTX 1050 Ti which is already more than required for transcoding.