I'm currently running an old Supermicro X9DRi-LN4+ with dual Intel Xeon E5-2670 v2 CPUs. It's served me well for years but this old Supermicro is loud, hot, and power-hungry. I've been planning a new build with an i5-14500, but I'm wary of the issues with Intel's 13th/14th gen. I just saw the news about the new 15th gen, and although it doesn't look like a huge performance boost over 13th/14th gen, it does look like it's a big leap in power efficiency, and presumably they'll have ironed out the issues that Raptor Lake recently had.

 

What are your thoughts on Arrow Lake? Is the loss of hyperthreading a big negative? They say it's more power efficient than the previous gens but it looks like the "base power" of the Ultra 5 245K is 125W compared to the 65W on the i5-14500.... so does that mean the 245K would use more power for the same load as an i5-14500, or am I misunderstanding how that works? If you were rebuilding your server soon (and assuming long-term power efficiency & performance are more important to you than upfront cost) would you be looking at the 200S (Arrow Lake) series or would you get something different?

Edited October 11, 20241 yr by Gazeley

10 hours ago, Gazeley said:

What are your thoughts on Arrow Lake?

Cool tech.

 

10 hours ago, Gazeley said:

Is the loss of hyperthreading a big negative?

With 24 cores, I don't think you need hyperthreading...

 

10 hours ago, Gazeley said:

"base power" of the Ultra 5 245K is 125W compared to the 65W on the i5-14500

Sorry but that is not a fair comparison because you are comparing a K series CPU to a non K series CPU.

A non K variant was always a lower TDP than a K variant.

 

10 hours ago, Gazeley said:

or am I misunderstanding how that works

Mostly yes, we are talking here about a faster CPU with IPC improvements which is able to do the "work" quicker than it's previous generation but as said above, you are comparing a non K CPU with a K CPU.

 

10 hours ago, Gazeley said:

would you be looking at the 200S (Arrow Lake) series or would you get something different

Just hold off a bit, this is bleeding edge tech which is not even released yet.

 

On Linux bleeding edge is not always good, or better said, I would avoid it initially, because maybe the scheduler for the CPU or maybe the iGPU doesn't work at all, these are only a few things from many that I can think of.

Usually the Kernel needs to catch up and implement all the new Hardware/Features so that everything works properly.

Thinking of doing something similar once stable and is supported by OS. I have dual Intel® Xeon® CPU E5-2697 v2 @ 2.70GHz and currently moving from 3,4,5G drives to 16,18Gs

5 hours ago, ich777 said:

Sorry but that is not a fair comparison because you are comparing a K series CPU to a non K series CPU.

A non K variant was always a lower TDP than a K variant.

Ah I see, I thought the "K" just meant it could be overclocked, I didn't realize that also meant a higher TDP than the non-K. In that case I'll definitely wait for the non-K SKUs and go with whatever the best 65W option is.

 

5 hours ago, ich777 said:

Just hold off a bit, this is bleeding edge tech which is not even released yet.

I understand that, and I guess that's part of what I'm asking - is it worth waiting a couple months for Arrow Lake to roll out, or should I just go with an i5-14500? Apparently the i5-14500 (non-K) isn't affected by the Raptor Lake issues - but I'm leaning towards waiting because it looks like 15th gen is a big bump in efficiency, and presumably I'd be getting more bang for my buck.

19 minutes ago, Gazeley said:

I understand that, and I guess that's part of what I'm asking - is it worth waiting a couple months for Arrow Lake to roll out, or should I just go with an i5-14500? Apparently the i5-14500 (non-K) isn't affected by the Raptor Lake issues - but I'm leaning towards waiting because it looks like 15th gen is a big bump in efficiency, and presumably I'd be getting more bang for my buck.

I would wait a little bit longer since nobody yet knows if their claims are true, but I think they will be mostly true.

 

However I don't think that it will be much of a difference if you go now with the 14500 since this is also a great CPU with a great iGPU for transcoding.
Most of the systems are idling anyways most of the time and that's where Intel mostly shines, but nobody yet knows how the new generation from Intel will behave and how low they can go in idle or almost idle...

I'm also looking at upgrading my 13 year old hardware with arrow lake, especially for reduced power consumption but my hardware also is too slow for transcoding. But I'm likely to wait a month at least before making the upgrade.

 

That said, does anyone have any motherboards that they are eyeballing to support? Typically in my usual rigs I stick with Asus rog strix but this will likely be overkill. 

11 minutes ago, simplemoe said:

I'm also looking at upgrading my 13 year old hardware with arrow lake, especially for reduced power consumption but my hardware also is too slow for transcoding. But I'm likely to wait a month at least before making the upgrade.

 

That said, does anyone have any motherboards that they are eyeballing to support? Typically in my usual rigs I stick with Asus rog strix but this will likely be overkill. 

I tend to like MSI boards, so maybe https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MPG-Z890-CARBON-WIFI/Specification as it allows 2x x8 slots for hba and GPU for VM. And leaves spare x4

 

Has 5 and 2.5 gig NICs.

 

On 10/12/2024 at 9:01 AM, SimonF said:

I tend to like MSI boards, so maybe https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/MPG-Z890-CARBON-WIFI/Specification as it allows 2x x8 slots for hba and GPU for VM. And leaves spare x4

 

Has 5 and 2.5 gig NICs.

Thanks, I'll definitely keep that as a contender. The other I am looking at is the Asus pro art which has 10 gb. I've plenty of time to decide.

 

https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/proart/proart-z890-creator-wifi/

At first I wanted to buy the MSI Z890 ACE motherboard because of the 10 Gbits port. However, the ACE has line sharing for the PCIe card slots, i.e. if all slots are occupied, the lanes in slot 1 are halved (if I have understood this correctly). That's why I've decided in favour of the MSI Z890 Carbon, because there are apparently no restrictions with a full PCIe card configuration (if the official MSI specifications are correct...). But now I still need a solution for the 10 Gbits connection, without a PCIe card and it will probably be this one (should consume little power): IOCREST USB4 Single Port 10G Ethernet Adapter.
By the way, the PCIe line sharing on the Asus ProArt Z890-CREATOR Wifi is even worse, an entire x16 card slot becomes unusable when an SSD is inserted in the M.2_5.

 

 

 

Edited October 27, 20241 yr by virtubit

will arrow lake require unraid 7 for support?  specifically looking at using the igpu for av1 encoding

Hard to tell how good the currently available Arrow power data is but it looks like it's ~3x Alder, Raptor, and AMD APUs’ idle draw. Perf/watt is ok, but for my server what I care about is that idle power consumption.

 

In light of that I'm not going to be waiting around for Arrow Lake. I'm going to build something around an i5-14500 (partly because it is a re-badged Alder Lake and doesn't suffer from the recent microcode issues). Just posted my build plan here.

 

Really appreciate everyone's input.

On 10/28/2024 at 12:40 AM, Gazeley said:

Really appreciate everyone's input.

Have a look to Phoronix reviews of Arrow Lake

 

* It's Memory Controller support of new CUDIMM

 

https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-arrow-lake-ddr5

 

* Core Ultra 9 285K

https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-core-ultra-9-285k-linux

 

* Core Ultra 5 245K

https://www.phoronix.com/review/intel-core-ultra-5-245k-linux

 

* CoreFreq

I'm also programming support for Arrow Lake 

I have been shown previews of IMC decoding and mainstream Linux support

 

https://github.com/cyring/CoreFreq/commits/develop

I purchased and built Arrow Lake this last weekend. I haven’t tried anything yet as far as moving my drives/array and sounds like I need to wait until support is in the kernel anyways? I went with a gigabyte elite ice X and i7-265K. Current rig is only 8 years old (i7-6700K) and will have backup duties after a new license. 

3 hours ago, wildwolf said:

I purchased and built Arrow Lake this last weekend. I haven’t tried anything yet as far as moving my drives/array and sounds like I need to wait until support is in the kernel anyways? I went with a gigabyte elite ice X and i7-265K. Current rig is only 8 years old (i7-6700K) and will have backup duties after a new license. 

Went ahead and downloaded the installer utility, created boot media, and it just hangs after selecting initial option (unRAID, unRAID with GUI, etc.).
Wondering how premature my purchase was. Maybe I'll delegate this to my desktop and use my motherboard/CPU as the new primary unRAID box (i7-12700K). Wonder how much of a wait I have? 

I would personally wait until non-k and/or Ultra 3 CPU's show up and Unraid fully supports them OFFICIALLY. I think for most people, an Ultra 3 would be "good enough" in an unraid setup (of course not for all, depends on use-case). When the Ultra 3 shows up, it will likely be with more affordable chipsets (motherboards) as well, like B860 or H810 as well as consuming lower power. Will probably have its limitations as well, but again, all depends on your actual needs!  The biggest "issue" that I see with the new motherboards for ArrowLake is that they only have 4 SATA-ports on board, in favor of more M.2 slots. I currently have 6 SATA ports, and would want to avoid having HBA's if I can.

For reference, currently running on ASUS B360M motherboard and i5-9400 with an Intel Arc A310 GPU for Plex-transcoding.

Edited November 5, 20241 yr by Prebz

I was all set - had the parts for a nice z790 mobo & 14700K in the cart, then saw Arrow Lake coming out about a week later, so I waited. In 2021, I upgraded my current desktop to i7-12700 on z690 mobo, because I waited 2 days after launch of z790 to review things and by then, they were all sold out everywhere, so I had to get the z690 board.

I tried to avoid that this time around, and forgot the fact that unRAID takes/needs time for new hardware to be supported. My mistake. My bad. So, I have a newly built server I can't use. Could reconfigure and use as desktop for family, swap with my z690/12700K, etc. Too much to decide on quickly.

I am not concerned with the 4 SATA ports, I only used 2 in unRAID for SSD Cache drives. I have HBAs and yes, I saw you were avoiding those.

 

at the glacial rate the unraid team updates the kernel, i imagine it will be quite a while before it's supported.  

10G networking nice (great in fact), support for the newest/bleeding edge Intel silicon is...  Well, just not important. Intel chips aren't fast whether you get one back a couple of generations or one that comes out tomorrow. If you have really demanding CPU needs, then I'm not sure why you're setting up a server to serve general purpose. If it's for transcoding video then, fast network and cheap storage negates all needs for that around here. Why would I transcode instead of just streaming high bandwidth 4K to every client?

 

Save your money, buy a slightly older CPU and set up multiple systems dedicated to a narrower scope of functions.

 

 

Edited November 8, 20241 yr by Espressomatic

16 hours ago, Espressomatic said:

10G networking nice (great in fact), support for the newest/bleeding edge Intel silicon is...  Well, just not important. Intel chips aren't fast whether you get one back a couple of generations or one that comes out tomorrow. If you have really demanding CPU needs, then I'm not sure why you're setting up a server to serve general purpose. If it's for transcoding video then, fast network and cheap storage negates all needs for that around here. Why would I transcode instead of just streaming high bandwidth 4K to every client?

 

Save your money, buy a slightly older CPU and set up multiple systems dedicated to a narrower scope of functions.

 

 

 

im not sure you understand how video playback works.  transcoding is absolutely necessary to account for the capabilities of the client.  simply increasing bandwidth doesn't mean it's going to be able to magically decode the video.  

Edited November 9, 20241 yr by oliver

Yeah, I used to work for the largest graphics chip company in the world, but I probably forgot all about how video works.

 

I don't own anything that can't decode a 4k stream. And I make it a priority to store content using codecs the devices I'll want to play it on can handle.

 

If I play anything out of Plex and it reports that it's transcoding, then that means there's a problem that needs to be fixed. For me, that problem is finding out why it's transcoding and then making sure it doesn't. The solution is never going to be to add more horsepower to handle a real-time stream transcode.

 

Besides that, I also keep much less content on Plex than I use to, and set up other streaming services on Unraid to proxy the content from elsewhere. That ends up saving on storage expenses too. I don't run anything in Plex that I share out to anyone not in this household - again, there are other solutions for that.

 

But at the end of the day, if you do want to transcode, you'd want dedicated hardware, and previous gen Intel stuff, including their ARC does that fairly well. Arrow lake is a mess and I wouldn't touch anything beyond 12th gen. I don't see Unraid as a limiting factor either way, since its kernel limitations can be gotten around for such dedicated tasks (VM for example).

Edited November 9, 20241 yr by Espressomatic

15 hours ago, Espressomatic said:

I don't own anything that can't decode a 4k stream. And I make it a priority to store content using codecs the devices I'll want to play it on can handle.

 

 

i stopped reading after this because nothing else you said mattered.  nobody cares about what YOU do.  transcoding is for the masses.  

Pretty sure you need Kernel 6.11.
If you feel brave you could probably attempt to build it yourself.   Everyone transcoding with an Arc GPU is doing that or running the 7 Beta right now.
As you said you cant get it to boot even with your new rig, you would have to build it on the old one, and then try it.

So, if you have the time, I think its worth a shot, but I would not run a ZFS array or pool.

That post should get you moving in the right direction.....
But as I said, make sure you are feeling Brave

 

Edit:

Just to be clear, the post I linked is not the kernel you need. Just a general example of how you will need to go about it.

Edited November 13, 20241 yr by JaY_III
make it more clear

I'm very new to unraid, but built a new system to eventually take over as a primary do all server at home replacing a synology nas.

 

I'm using a asus z890-p wifi and a intel 245k with unraid 7 beta 4

 

I run several docker container including jellyfin, plex, handbrake, portainer, syncthing amoungst others plus a raid zfs array plus a normal unraid array with nvme cache

and have found this hardware combination very stable.

 

the 245k runs on a air cooler and idles at roughly 33-36c with room temps of roughly 23c, under load with handbrake it will sometimes peak to 62c.

 

The Igpu is not available to use however even with correct bios settings and top drivers in unraid (maybe a motherboard thing or maybe the kernal doesnt fully support yet)

but my arc a310 works well for all my transcoding needs.

 

The system is rock solid so far and i find the 245k to be a more than suitable cpu for everything i have thrown it, I hve not missed hyperthreading to be honest.

 

 

 

On 11/14/2024 at 12:37 AM, scottm8124 said:

I'm very new to unraid, but built a new system to eventually take over as a primary do all server at home replacing a synology nas.

 

I'm using a asus z890-p wifi and a intel 245k with unraid 7 beta 4

 

I run several docker container including jellyfin, plex, handbrake, portainer, syncthing amoungst others plus a raid zfs array plus a normal unraid array with nvme cache

and have found this hardware combination very stable.

 

the 245k runs on a air cooler and idles at roughly 33-36c with room temps of roughly 23c, under load with handbrake it will sometimes peak to 62c.

 

The Igpu is not available to use however even with correct bios settings and top drivers in unraid (maybe a motherboard thing or maybe the kernal doesnt fully support yet)

but my arc a310 works well for all my transcoding needs.

 

The system is rock solid so far and i find the 245k to be a more than suitable cpu for everything i have thrown it, I hve not missed hyperthreading to be honest.

 

 

 

Do you have any power consumption numbers? Specifically while idle.

10 hours ago, 12323r said:

Do you have any power consumption numbers? Specifically while idle.

With drives spun down, but dgpu arc a310 eco, pcie 10gbe card and pcie hba card and 2 nvme drives still powered up , UPS reports 65w idle

Edited November 20, 20241 yr by scottm8124