New user planning first build

[Felixen]

Greetings,

 

New member here and I have been browsing the forums and done a fair bit of google searches but I still have so many questions but I'll start with a few basic ones.

 

Having two old Qnap NAS looking for replacement I got a tip about unraid and this seems to fit my need perfectly. My usecase will be file, a few VM's (win srv 2016, win7?!, and win10), docker and mediaserver (plex server).

 

My first main question is about MB/CPU combos and hw trascoding in Plex with igpu or gfx-card.

 

So first I was looking at:

ASUS PRIME B660M-A D4

Intel Core i7 12700K 3.6 GHz 25MB

 

My initial thought was trying out embedded igpu for transcoding but now I understand this is not fully supported yet by kernel. What if I throw in a ASUS GeForce GTX 1660 Super 6GB DUAL EVO OC gfx-card to use for transcoding would my choice of cpu work for my other needs or should I back my cpu to a Intel Core i7 11700KF 3.6 GHz,16MB? Or do I need to go further back to 10th gen?

 

From what I read I understand that with the 11th gen I can try out igpu hw-transcode first and add gfx-card later if cpu is not enough?

 

If I want to stay on the stable path of releases which gen of cpu would you go with? I have no probs throwing in a gfx-card for transcoding if it means a newer gen cpu is possible.

 

Still in planning mode so nothing is decided yet and most options are open

 

Thnx in advance!

 

// Felix

[randomninjaatk]

I'm building a second 12th gen system myself. I currently use an 8th gen i5 with HW transcoding and it works great.

 

I would say stick with 12th gen, even though HW transcoding for tone mapping doesn't appear to work yet. I would believe this will get resolved in the near future, and by running 12th gen, you can later upgrade your motherboard to swap to DDR5, giving you greater longevity.

 

Just my thought...

 

Once transcoding is resolved, I will probably move my 12th gen to the primary system and make the existing mobo/cpu combo as the secondary system.

 

EDIT: However, if you need something right now that has to work, you should probably consider 11th gen to be safe. Since I'm building a second system, I can easily wait for everything to get updated. And then move the parts to my main system once everything is resolved and use my existing 8th gen as the secondary system.

Edited January 27, 2022 by randomninjaatk

[Felixen]

Thank you for your reply!

 

I'm leaning on sticking with the 12th gen cpu as you suggest. Since I have a GTX 1660 card on the shelf it would do my hw-transcode with no problem from what I can read. 

 

Since MB and CPU will be new parts I kind of like to go for as new as possible. Btw do you know any issues with 12th gen intel and docker or virtual servers?

 

The VM's won't be for gaming or anything, just a win srv for mixed stuff and a win 10 which is my 'jump host' where I offload apps that I need now and again but don't want on my regular computer  So low resource no fancy stuff.