I currently have an Intel server board with an atom d510 processor and two gb of ram in my server. I happen to have leftover parts from a htpc. I have a gigabyte motherboard, amd x2 240, and 4 gb ram available. If I were to swap my Intel atom out for the amd would their be any noticeable performance boost from the server that is used to feed dvd and blu Ray rips (mkv) to iPads, iPhones, ps4, and an offsite Apple TV.  It will only feed two of the devices at any given time.

The X2 240 has significantly more "horsepower" than a D510 ... HOWEVER, if you're simply serving files it won't make any difference (assuming both motherboards support Gb networks).

 

If you're just using UnRAID as a NAS (which it sounds like you're doing), I'd just leave things as they are ... the D510 is a FAR more power-efficient system, so there's no reason to increase the power consumption of your system.

 

You might, however, want to boost the RAM in your server up to 4GB.

 

great!  Thank you and you are correct. It is serving the media only and a Mac mIni is doing the transcoding.  I will certainly look into a ram upgrade but stupid question... How will that help me if it is only serving media over the network?

 

 

...  I will certainly look into a ram upgrade but stupid question... How will that help me if it is only serving media over the network?

 

It won't if you're not having any streaming issues.    I assumed the fact you're considering the upgrade implied you may be having occasional stutters on your streams ... if that's the case, a bit more buffer space will almost certainly resolve that.    If you're not having any issues, then you don't need to bother with more memory.

 

I won't upgrade. The only reason I considered was because I upgrade my htpc and had the spare parts available to use. I figured rather than selling them I would find use for them. I'm not having any issues so there is no need.

Sounds like a good choice.

 

FWIW, if you DO decide you want to upgrade the server, I'd move to a far more powerful CPU than the spare X2 240 you have.    You may as well get a CPU with enough "horsepower" to do a few transcodes if you're going to bother to upgrade ... and while the X2 has more than twice the power of your Atom, it still isn't powerful enough to reliably do transcodes.

 

That's a good point.  Thank you for the help