Yet another AMD vs Intel question

[MustardTiger]

Hi guys. I've been a very long time lurker here, since 2011, but have never pulled the trigger on a build, but I've finally decided nows the time. I've tried to do a lot of research for my upcoming unraid build, but I'm struggling to make a decision on which CPU to go with for the build.

 

I know of course Intel CPUs with an iGPU have quicksync which allow for hardware acceleration for plex and is very power efficient etc. If AMD and Intel CPUs of a similar performance bracket (not taking into account the performance benefit of quicksync) were a similar price, then of course I would just go for the Intel CPU. However, this is not the case, and I can get a much better performing AMD, like the 7 3700X (23k passmark score) compared to an i7-9700K (14.5k passmark) for the same price.

 

I will be using a GTX 1080 in the build, so in my case I am not forced to get a CPU with an iGPU. I have tried to get as much info I can as to what whether an iGPU with my dGPU would be beneficial, but I am a bit lost. I will only probably be having 1 plex stream at a time, so would a quicksync CPU even be necessary? I am also going to be gaming on this build (Windows 10 VM), not much, but I would like fairly decent performance from it.

 

I know the CPUs I have mentioned are probably overkill for my needs, but I would like a lot of headroom for possibly more VMs, docker apps etc. I'll have about 16TB of drives, I haven't quite worked out how these will be set up. Would a server board and xeon cpu possibly be better (possibly x2 CPU)? I know gaming performance will be severely constrained with a xeon due to the single thread performance.

 

Any advice will be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

 

Edit: Also, for an all-in-one daily use/gaming/htpc am I looking in the wrong direction with unraid?

Edited June 3, 2021 by chrisjwalker