I'm considering building an unRAID system. Mainly for storing all my personal content (family photos, videos, DVD and Bluray) to ensure a little redundancy in the event of a drive failure. I'd also like to be able to stream and potentially transcode if needed to at least two devices at once. I'd prefer to not have to reencode all my media to a standard H.264 file in order to playback so transcoding may be needed. Can anyone provide a recommendation based on experience for a suitable CPU? AMD or Intel? I'm not looking to break the bank but don't have a defined budget yet. Thanks in advance!

FWIW I find that my older AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8GHz quad core transcodes and serves up media to multiple devices with no issue.

The 3rd or 4th gen Intel Core architecture CPU's are superb at transcoding -- you can do several streams at once without breaking a sweat on the CPU 

 

The Core i3-3225 is an excellent choice.  But any of the 3rd or 4th gen chips will work just fine.

 

The 3rd or 4th gen Intel Core architecture CPU's are superb at transcoding -- you can do several streams at once without breaking a sweat on the CPU 

 

The Core i3-3225 is an excellent choice.  But any of the 3rd or 4th gen chips will work just fine.

 

Can you please be more specific about the 3rd and 4th gen names?

The 3rd or 4th gen Intel Core architecture CPU's are superb at transcoding -- you can do several streams at once without breaking a sweat on the CPU 

 

The Core i3-3225 is an excellent choice.  But any of the 3rd or 4th gen chips will work just fine.

 

Can you please be more specific about the 3rd and 4th gen names?

 

The Ivy Bridge chips are 3rd generation [ http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007671%20600315409%20600005584&IsNodeId=1&name=Core%20i3 ]

 

... Haswell chips are 4th gen.    [ http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007671%20600436885%20600005584&IsNodeId=1&name=Core%20i3 ]

 

Obviously you need to buy an appropriate motherboard [socket 1155 for Ivy Bridge;  1150 for Haswell ]

 

Gary,

Thanks for the information. While I'd love to get an Intel, the CPU and mobo combination be more than what I can spend. Ill try looking the AMD route.

AMD is good for low-cost systems.

 

Basically, with modern processors, go Intel for performance;  AMD for low-cost.

 

But the performance of the AMDs is "good enough" for many uses -- including this one.

 

The AMD FX-6300 is a pretty phenomenal deal that costs about the same as an i3 but encodes x264 slightly faster than an i5-2500.  Source: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/28

 

However, it does use a fair bit more power than either Intel chip.

The AMD FX-6300 is a pretty phenomenal deal that costs about the same as an i3 but encodes x264 slightly faster than an i5-2500.  Source: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/CPU/28

 

However, it does use a fair bit more power than either Intel chip.

 

The FX-6300 isn't a bad low-cost chip;  but with a TDP of 95w it's going to draw a lot more energy than a modern i3 or i5.  Comparing it to a 2nd gen i5 isn't a fair comparison => it's a current AMD chip, so compare it to the current Intels        ... and it's easily outperformed by a 3rd or 4th gen i5 => and would almost certainly be outperformed by a 4th gen i3, which scores very close on Passmark -- but does that with only 2 cores instead of the 6 on the FX-6300 => put another way, a Haswell i3 (e.g. 4130 or 4330) has TRIPLE the per/core performance of an FX-6300 ... and does that with a TDP of only 54 watts !!

 

The 3rd or 4th gen Intel Core architecture CPU's are superb at transcoding -- you can do several streams at once without breaking a sweat on the CPU 

 

The Core i3-3225 is an excellent choice.  But any of the 3rd or 4th gen chips will work just fine.

Any reason a Sandy Bridge wouldn't work just as well (assuming you already have it)? Certainly the 3rd and 4th gens are more power efficient and marginally faster, but I'm not missing something here, am I?

A Sandy Bridge will work just fine.    The key improvements as the core architecture chips moved from Sandy to Ivy to Haswell were a reduction in power requirements and a significant improvement in the on-chip graphics.    But with UnRAID the graphics capability is irrelevant (unless you're doing video transcoding -- that has also improved a good bit from Sandy -> Ivy -> Haswell).

 

But certainly if you "already have it", by all means just use your Sandy Bridge CPU !!