New build

[anylettuce]

Time to plan a upgrade to my current setup.

With myself moving to a new city living in a small and I mean small apartment I need to relocate my seever while still being able  to watch my TV and movies via plex.

I am setting up a separate isp account and having the server at a relatives place.

I can see upto 5 transcoding streams at once. 10mbps transcoding at the max.

What processor/mb should I look at?

I might be running a instance of windows as well of the machine.

Currently this is a 6 year plan.

[tdallen]

The general rule of thumb is 2,000 Passmarks per 1080p stream.  I don't really like that, I think it makes sense to start with a 4,000 Passmark CPU for basic unRAID functionality and a single 1080p stream, and then add 2,000 Passmarks per additional stream.

 

That said - a rule of thumb is at best an average - which means it is wrong as often as it is right.  If you have h.264 encoded material and relatively smart players you won't use much CPU at all.  If you have a high bit rate native bluray rip and a dumb players you can crank over 4,000 passmarks for a single stream.  So take into consideration your source material and players as you plan.

 

In theory you need 10,000 - 12,000 Passmarks to support 5 transcoding streams.  That puts it at the upper end of E3 Xeon or Core i7 territory.  If you really want to support a Windows VM as well then you should consider an E5 Xeon or dual CPU setup.  On the other hand, based on the discussion above you should really look at what your real world transcoding needs will be.  What is your current setup, and how is it performing?