Need help choosing a CPU to build around

I'm looking to start a new home server build and want to pin down my options for a CPU first, and take it from there. I've been trying to look stuff up on google all evening but whatever I just keep finding the same Reddit/Unraid forum threads that aren't really answering my question.

Unraid will be baremetal and containers added to it.

My concerns are not too unique - obviously I want to find the sweet spot where it's not drawing too much power/costing too much to run/making too much heat (especially at idle) but doesn't get bogged down performance wise when I need it.

I'm also trying to balance what I need today with what I might need in the future. If that future use case is 5 years away then maybe it makes more sense to upgrade/rebuild everything down the road and cheap out today.

What I want to do immediately (what I'm currently doing on an old system, headless Ubuntu server):
Plex: 8-10 transcodes, ability to do 1-2 4k transcodes with tone mapping (I only make my 4k library available to myself and fully intend to direct play everything but I'd like a fallback)

Jellyfin: Same as above. I'm close to switching but need a few more client apps to mature
-arr Suite etc: Movies/TV Shows, NZBGet,

Dropbox Replacement: Nextcloud or similar

What I want to do soon

Home Assistant VM: VM rather than container for Supervisor

 - Thermostat, maybe a single (doorbell) camera, lightbulbs etc, simple stuff for now

Some Networking Stuff: I have a TP-Link Omada setup, the controller is currently dockerised (but if/when it goes on sale I'll probably buy the hardware controller), might add something like a Pi-Hole or Adguard Home container

What I'd like to down down the line

Add some more cameras, maybe introduce a Coral card, Frigate/Blue Iris

I don't think all this is especially demanding. I can't figure out if having the iGPU available for Plex/Jellyfin transcoding means it's unavailable to the HASS VM for cameras? Do I need to look at something like GVT-G or SR-IOV for that (I haven't researched that yet).

From a transcoding standpoint I think anything Coffee Lake/8th Gen onwards with UHD 630 is basically the same? I don't know if AV1 is really that big a deal, especially with the issues of 11th/12th Gen support today. 12th Gen Performance/Efficiency cores sound great on paper but it sounds like a headache right now.

How many cores (/threads) do I need to look at? In Coffee Lake there's Pentium Gold 2c4t, i3 4c4t or i5 6c6t.

I don't know how much it matters, but there's ECC support on something like the i3-9100, but not the i5-8500

And then there's price. Looking at used on ebay, low end prices inc delivery to Canada
G5500 - $130 from China

i3-8100 - $105 from US

i3-8300 - $115 from US

i3-9100 - $110 from China

i5-8500 - $80 from US

i5-8600 - $110 from US

So it seems like at least from a price/performance point alone the 8500 is the clear winner, but there's no ECC (again, not sure how much of a dealbreaker it is).

Is it worth looking at a T series for power saving? What about going to 9th Gen for Jellyfin's Low Power Encoding?

Is there anything else I'm missing?

Thanks for reading my insane wall of text, would love any input.

Edited July 2, 20224 yr by daithi