October 4, 20169 yr Thinking about to build an unRaid machine that should replace/serve both: - desktops/working (office software, web development, iOS development on MacOS VM) - gaming (preferably all new games at max settings on an 1080p plasma) - media/HTPC - owncloud - Plex Server How much horsepower (CPU/GHz/Cores) would I need if: 1) I want to run two VMs: desktop/work + gaming simultaneously? 2) everything runs separately or only desktop/work + media/HTPC together? Currently thinking of a 4-core or 6-core i7 CPU (reason for a 6-core so that I'd have 4 cores for gaming and 2 cores for everything else).
October 4, 20169 yr Are you planning to develop a website at the exact moment you are playing halo? . Basically, do not overthink this. There is no reason why you cannot dedicate all cores to the gaming machine. It is very unlikely that that machine will "run away" with all 100% of the CPU. Im not saying there is no need to separate cores, but like I said, do not overthink this. Make sure you are paying attention to passmark scores when choosing a CpU for plex. Its not enough to just say "oh this is a 6 core, and this is a 4 core". Not all CPUs are equal
October 4, 20169 yr Plex likes a lot of CPU if you are having it transcode. Do you want to game and transcode at the same time?
October 4, 20169 yr Author Thanks for your replies. No, I likely won't work and transcode or game at the same time. I was thinking about the (still rare) scenario where I want to take a small break from work and play a game. In that case, could both VMs (the work VM and the gaming VM) keep running even with only four cores? Same for the other applications mentioned above. Anyhow, what CPU do you recommend for my situation? Would the i7-6700 work? How about i7 vs. Xeon?
October 5, 20169 yr Author So I am thinking about to get either: Intel Xeon E3-1275 v5 @ 3.60GHz, passmark 10,256 Intel Core i7-6700 @ 3.40GHz, passmark 9,965 Both would be in my target price range (though I don't have a budget but am willing to spend as much money as needed without overpaying/overkilling), come with VT-x and VT-d, have onboard graphics, and are quite newer generation models. I still don't understand: - what passmark I should be looking for - how much GHz ich should be looking for - how many cores I need - whether ECC RAM support is needed Any opinions?
October 5, 20169 yr So I am thinking about to get either: Intel Xeon E3-1275 v5 @ 3.60GHz, passmark 10,256 Intel Core i7-6700 @ 3.40GHz, passmark 9,965 Both would be in my target price range (though I don't have a budget but am willing to spend as much money as needed without overpaying/overkilling), come with VT-x and VT-d, have onboard graphics, and are quite newer generation models. I still don't understand: - what passmark I should be looking for - how much GHz ich should be looking for - how many cores I need - whether ECC RAM support is needed Any opinions? Passmark for servers is generally used when you expecting Plex transcoding per the rule of 2000 per transcode stream. However, I don't think it accounts for H.265 10-bit as I have a 90 minute movie that plays back at 97% or more the entire time on an AMD AM1 5350 (2567 Passmark, OpenELEC over SMB). Ghz, for gaming higher is better as most games aren't optimized for more than two cores (on average, some new x64 games are being released that do support more than two threads). Cores depends on if you are going to be doing lots of things at once or just one or two. I run lots of things on my server... so I upgraded my AMD FX-6300 (6333 Passmark) to dual E5-2670 v1 (18528 Passmark!) build when they flooded eBay. A fair bit of the time the server sits idle, but when I'm doing video encoding I don't want it to mess up my friends using my Plex remotely, or my own experience playing back in a Kodi VM (one core, both threads). So high core/thread count makes all my dockers and VMs get along fine. ECC not required, but nice. Check eBay for server pulls to get a good amount of RAM pretty cheap.
October 5, 20169 yr So I am thinking about to get either: Intel Xeon E3-1275 v5 @ 3.60GHz, passmark 10,256 Intel Core i7-6700 @ 3.40GHz, passmark 9,965 Both would be in my target price range (though I don't have a budget but am willing to spend as much money as needed without overpaying/overkilling), come with VT-x and VT-d, have onboard graphics, and are quite newer generation models. I still don't understand: - what passmark I should be looking for - how much GHz ich should be looking for - how many cores I need - whether ECC RAM support is needed Any opinions? The i7-4790k is 289 at 4.0GHZ and a passmark of 11118 The I7-6700 is 279 at 3.4GHz with a passmark of 9965 The i7-6700k is 299 at 4.0Ghz with a passmark of 10,979 Prices are from Microcenter, I would say, based on this, id spend the extra 10 bucks for the 4790k maybe.
October 11, 20169 yr Is it still the case that the haswell i7 4xxx are better for vt-d than the skylake i7 6xxx? (i think it had to do with iommu grouping?) it feels strange seeking out a new box with old tech but if that's what the gurus say...
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