Are power CPU wasted on UNraid server or can it use it for faster performance?

 

Does AMD or Intel make a difference?  What is the limiting factor?

 

Thanks.

4 minutes ago, John Danger said:

Are power CPU wasted on UNraid server

That depends on how you want to use unRAID.  If you just want to use it as a pure NAS with only a few clients accessing it, faster CPUs with more cores are not needed.  If you want to host virtual machines then, yes all that CPU horsepower can be put to good use.  If you won't be creating VMs but want to run a lot of Docker containers for things like Plex/Emby/Jellyfin, backup to the cloud, media downloading, etc. then a mid-range CPU will probably be sufficient.

 

Intel vs. AMD often comes down to whether or not you want a CPU with an integrated GPU and whether or not you want to do media transcoding with the iGPU.  Intel is better supported by the apps that do this although some have been able to get AMD integrated GPUs working as well. 

 

In general, Intel CPUs are a little less problematic with Linux/unRAID than AMD although most of the AMD problems are in the past now and there are workarounds for those that remain.  You will find lots of unRAID servers happily running on AMD hardware so it is more a matter of choice than necessity.