With the release of PS4/Xbox Plex clients I decided to add Plex to my media server, the problem is the CPU is spiking to 100% and crashing unRIAD. So I am looking for a replacement board and CPU. My current setup is this:

 

Mobo: ASUSTeK Computer INC. - M4A89GTD-PRO/USB3

CPU: AMD Athlon II X4 600e @ 2.2 GHz

RAM: 4x 2GB 1600 DDR3

Nic: Intel PRO/1000 CT

All HD's are connected through a Supermicro SAS card.

 

I am looking at getting these for replacements:

 

Mobo: Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H mATX FM2+ A88X

CPU AMD Athlon X4 860K Black Edition 4000MHZ 4MB 95W FM2+ Processor

 

Will these be fully compatible with unRAID or should I be looking elsewhere? My main concern is stability as the server is used by several HTPC's and hosts over 20TB of content. I am also wanting to reduce the power consumption as much as possible without sacrificing performance too much.

The motherboard works fine. I'm using it with a A8-7600 Kaveri. The processor you picked appears to be slightly better performance and cost wise only beaten by the Kaveri 65W TDP. The Kaveri is also switchable to 45W by accepting a performance reduction.

 

I'm not sure it's great at being a low power build. I'm seeing 55W with 5 drives installed of which 4 drives are spun down. The server has cage fans and 2 case fans and the CPU fan all running. An Intel build would likely do better.

Max performance with low power means Intel. Trade-off is cost. This from one who went AMD (six core FX) due to cost.

Amd also tents to be an over  all lower cost of entry to full iommu and ecc ram.

The motherboard works fine. I'm using it with a A8-7600 Kaveri. The processor you picked appears to be slightly better performance and cost wise only beaten by the Kaveri 65W TDP. The Kaveri is also switchable to 45W by accepting a performance reduction.

 

I'm not sure it's great at being a low power build. I'm seeing 55W with 5 drives installed of which 4 drives are spun down. The server has cage fans and 2 case fans and the CPU fan all running. An Intel build would likely do better.

 

Richland A6-6400 reporting in, 5 drives, all spun down, 60 watts...

All spun up and doing a preclear on a sixth, 110 watts, i miss my intel...

Oh, I almost forgot. The X4 860K does not have integrated graphics in case you were expecting to use the motherboard onboard graphics.

Thanks, I know an Intel might be "better" but the cost means I get better performance for my money by going with Intel, even after factoring in the cost of the electricity.

 

The video does concern me, what CPU should I go with then that would have the integrated video and can integrated video be used for something like PLEX running in Docker?

Docker won't use any graphics on the server. You'd use a web interface or command line for them. You could pass the graphics to a VM, but I think it has to be a full card and not onboard.

 

For Dockers, the graphics would just be used if you access the command line on the server. If it will boot without graphics (I don't know how you can tell it will unless you just try it) you could use a telnet session to do the same thing. You would need a graphics card of some sort to set the bios for booting from the flash drive but could possibly remove it once the bios is set if it will boot.

Docker won't use any graphics on the server. You'd use a web interface or command line for them. You could pass the graphics to a VM, but I think it has to be a full card and not onboard.

 

For Dockers, the graphics would just be used if you access the command line on the server. If it will boot without graphics (I don't know how you can tell it will unless you just try it) you could use a telnet session to do the same thing. You would need a graphics card of some sort to set the bios for booting from the flash drive but could possibly remove it once the bios is set if it will boot.

 

I think what you mean is graphics is only needed if you connect a monitor to the unRaid box. Check the motherboard if it has support for an on-CPU or has its own chip.

 

Most AMD boards have a Radeon chip on the board while Intel boards support the i-series graphics logic on-CPU.

The motherboard was made to support the Kaveri GPU's. It has the graphics connections only. This is like most new motherboards.

@lionelhutz Thanks that answers my main question.

 

What I meant by my question about PLEX using the video was weather or not PLEX would use the GPU for transcoding to reduce stress on the CPU, I am new to PLEX so I was not sure. I understand that is not really a question for this board though so I will go to PLEX for that discussion.

GPU is not used by Plex at all for transcoding. Best performance  is all about CPU and to a lesser extent RAM & scratch disk.

 

The saying goes that you need 2000 Passmark per transcoding stream. Look up your CPU on the benchmark site to see where they rate.

 

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/

I bet the answer is no due to the docker, but it could work if running natively. I'm using MediaBrowser Server and my CPU will encode a file in about a 1/4 of the file play time. You seem to get very little in CPU processing power gain when buying a more expensive Kaveri, just better graphics processors.