Recommendation's unraid server hardware for Network streaming

[Roger Payne]

It's time to upgrade my 10 year old unraid server hardware (cpu, memory, motherboard) but not sure if I should stay with Intel or move to amd. After watching a lot of vids, I see that Linus has been showing the capabilities to game which I don't need, however, it may benefit the Plex transcoding?? So my main use of this server is to allow network streaming(smb or nfs) to Kodi and second to stream/transcode using Plex.

 

Should I move to Intel or AMD? If Intel, do I stick with coffee lake or can I save some money by going back a gen or two? Do I care about a video card for Plex transcoding?

Current drives
2x 4TB WD Red Parity
5x 4TB WD Red Pro
2x 256GB SSD Cache (using sata)
1x PCIE SAS controller
1x 4 port PCIE Intel Network card

[voyager_]

With an unraid server get the lowest power consuming card you can get. It will have no effect on transcoding the video. With the CPU you will have to look at the passmark scores. What size videos are you streaming? How many people will be streaming from it at a time. How concerned are you about power consumption?  Ryzen 3 should be able to handle 2-3 streams where Ryzen 5 could probably do 5 streams. If you need to be able to handle transcoding a 4k file you will need the extra processing power so the Ryzen 5 would be a better fit. Another option that you can look into is used server hardware.

 

Ive had an AMD system running for a few years now and it has not given me any problems so far. It's running an 8320e at 3Ghz, 16 gigs of ram and uses about the cheapest video card I could find on amazon. It has had no problems transcoding full blue-ray rips with no noticeable lag or buffering. It regularly has 2-3 users at a time.

[Roger Payne]

Thanks, I plan to stream 4k HDR movies at ~50GB and power is not a real concern. So you think ryzen over Intel eh?

[LAwLz]

If you're going to have a Plex Pass subscription, then an Intel processor with QuickSync support will destroy any AMD processor. Sadly, Plex does't allow QuickSync for free users and in those cases a Ryzen 5, 7 or one of the newer Intel 6 core processors will be better.

[Roger Payne]

Thanks for the help. Ryzen it is