jsmid6 Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 I currently have a Gen7 Microserver that I use for Plex, Couchpotato, Transmission, and headphones. However, the processor in this system is not up to the task and therefore I can't really do much transcoding. I stumbled upon unRAID recently and I'm very interested in running this for my new system, utilizing Dockers for the various applications. I've been reading the forums trying to decide what hardware to buy and I've come upon two options, the basics are the same just the processor and motherboard are different. Between these two configurations the AMD system is about 30 Euros cheaper: AMD AMD A8-7600 - Passmark 5184 MSI A88XM-E35 WD Green WD20EZRX Thermaltake Core V21 Lexar Jumpdrive S33 16GB Blauw Kingston KVR13N9S8/4 4GB Corsair Builder CX430 Bronze Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB INTEL Intel Core i3-4160 - Passmark 5037 ASRock B85M Pro3 WD Green WD20EZRX Thermaltake Core V21 Lexar Jumpdrive S33 16GB Blauw Kingston ValueRAM KVR16LN11/4 4GB Corsair Builder CX430 Bronze Kingston SSDNow V300 120GB I'll be using this system for Plex, Headphones, Sonarr, Couchpotato, Transmission/Deluge, nginx. At the most I'll have 2 simultaneous transcodes running, but usually just 1. looking at the Plex guidelines either of these processors should be able to handle this. I'm trying to keep my energy bill to a minimum considering this system will be running 24/7, which of these systems will use the least amount of electricity? Does anybody have bad experiences with any of these components? Thanks in advance for reading! Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 The AMD can be set to 65W or 45W TDP in the motherboard BIOS. That brings power consumption down with very little performance hit. The retail cooler on the A-series APUs are just fine. I run an A10-7850K on the stock cooler and it's cool enough and quiet. Big improvement over the coolers that came with the FX series. I ran an Asus A88X Gamer board, as it had 8 SATA ports and an Intel i211 NIC. Did a great job, though I'm using it elsewhere now, so I'm using the Q87WS-DL/Xeon rig for UnRAID now. Link to comment
CHBMB Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 I'm an Intel guy personally, but my thoughts.. In my experience, make absolute sure you know what you want to do with your machine before you start shelling out.. I can't comment on the AMD build but the Intel build won't passthrough PCIe devices to a virtual machine, that may or may not be relevant to you but before you buy anything I think that's an important question to answer. If there's any chance you may want to run any virtual machines with passthrough hardware then make absolutely sure the hardware is capable beforehand, as it'll be a costly oversight otherwise. Other than that, welcome to the community, you'll get lots of help if you ask and this is a very friendly and tolerant board, no question is too dumb to ask, if you don't believe me, then look at some of my posts... Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 You can pass through the AMD's GPU, which is impossible with the Intel. I had no issues passing through USB on the AMD, too. I do prefer Intel, but the AMD A10 really is a very nice option. It works pretty well, the extra SATA on the chipset is great, and the VM capability is good. Link to comment
CHBMB Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 You can pass through the AMD's GPU, which is impossible with the Intel. I had no issues passing through USB on the AMD, too. I do prefer Intel, but the AMD A10 really is a very nice option. It works pretty well, the extra SATA on the chipset is great, and the VM capability is good. I know next to nothing about AMD stuff... Never really been able to get my head around them since the days of the original Athlon. Intel makes a bit more sense to me somehow. Always was under the impression AMD is better value for money though, but I don't know how true that is nowadays.. Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 Well, the A10-7850K is the top of the range FM2+ APU, and it costs about £110. It's 3.7GHz with 4GHz Turbo, 8x GPU cores, 4 CPU cores, unlocked multiplier. The Athlon X4 860K is the same as the A10-7850K but with NO GPU enabled, otherwise it's the same. It's much cheaper, about £55. There's various different chipsets for the FM2 boards, but A88X is the latest and fastest, and uses the least power. It's handy in that it supports 8x SATA3 ports, USB3, etc. The bonus with the AMD is the motherboards are generally cheaper. The A88X Gamer I have is a full ATX board, has the souped-up audio, i211 NIC, 8x SATAs, decent overclocking, and only cost £80. A similar Intel board from Asus would be close to double that. So, basically, top-end overclocking Athlon X4 on a good board is going to be £130-140, which is i3 chip price. The i3 doesn't overclock. The AMD overclocks really well (my A10 runs at 4.2GHz and turbos to 4.6GHz on a basic air cooler). Edit: Fixed prices of the Athlon X4, amazed at the price! Link to comment
CHBMB Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 Well, the A10-7850K is the top of the range FM2+ APU, and it costs about £110. It's 3.7GHz with 4GHz Turbo, 8x GPU cores, 4 CPU cores, unlocked multiplier. The Athlon X4 860K is the same as the A10-7850K but with NO GPU enabled, otherwise it's the same. It's a little cheaper, about £100. There's various different chipsets for the FM2 boards, but A88X is the latest and fastest, and uses the least power. It's handy in that it supports 8x SATA3 ports, USB3, etc. The bonus with the AMD is the motherboards are generally cheaper. The A88X Gamer I have is a full ATX board, has the souped-up audio, i211 NIC, 8x SATAs, decent overclocking, and only cost £80. A similar Intel board from Asus would be close to double that. So, basically, top-end overclocking A10/Athlon X4 on a good board is going to be £180-190, which is i3 price. The i3 doesn't overclock. The AMD overclocks really well (my A10 runs at 4.2GHz and turbos to 4.6GHz on a basic air cooler). Any IPMI boards around, decided that my next upgrade that's a must.. Sorry OP for taking this OT.. Link to comment
HellDiverUK Posted August 25, 2015 Share Posted August 25, 2015 Any IPMI boards around, decided that my next upgrade that's a must.. Can't say I've seen any. It's highly doubtful. Link to comment
jsmid6 Posted August 27, 2015 Author Share Posted August 27, 2015 Thanks everybody! I went with the AMD System, i did end up changing the MB because the Revision 2 was available and was able to be delivered much quicker. With any luck i'll be able to build my new server this weekend. I'll post here how it works out. Link to comment
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