Mini ITX Motherboard Question

[DigitalDivide]

Hi, need some help from the experts.  I currently have the following ITX Motherboard 

M/B: ASRock - C2550D4I

CPU: Intel® Atom™ CPU C2550 @ 2.40GHz

 

It works really well for the most part, haven't had any issues.  I'm only running two dockers, Deluge VPN and Emby Server.  The one area where I notice a problem is when watching a 4k movie on my laptop wirelessly, which I rarely do,  as usually using my main tv.  I have Emby set to transcode choosing performance over quality and have tried numerous options but all options still max out the cpu to 100%.  I'm guessing the cpu is not powerful enough.  I was thinking of possible replacing it but honestly I don't know with what.  

 

I have to admin I'm getting really confused between ATOM, Avalone, Celeron, dual core, quad core, etc.  I really have no idea any more as to what's more powerful.  I was looking at some of these ASRock MB but could use some help in determining which are the more powereful that would be able to transcode a 4k film..if it's even possible.

 

The only really thing I need is at least 6 sata ports.  Would anyone be able to provide some assistance?

 

http://www.asrockrack.com/general/products.asp#Server 

[tdallen]

Hi -

 

The Atom C2550 has 4 cores and 2329 Passmarks .  Nice little system for a basic NAS and a few Dockers, but slightly underpowered for 1080p transcoding.  And definitely underpowered for 4k transcoding.  Before we dive into various chips, what do you want your system to be able to do over the next few years?

[DigitalDivide]

To be honest, my needs are not that great.  I currently have 5 drives, one cache and one unassigned.  I don't plan on expanding that.  I may move my unassigned drive off as well.  I down sized recently.  As long as I can watch 4k movies from my tower to Nvidia Shield and be able to watch a movie on my laptop very rarely, that's about it.

[tdallen]

As you know, the Nvidia Shield can handle a lot of the video thrown at it without transcoding.  If you need 1080p transcoding the rule of thumb is 2,000 Passmarks per 1080p stream.  Since unRAID needs some horsepower too, your C2550 is right at the limit of being able to handle a 1080p stream.

 

But then there's 4k... Transcoding 4k is new enough that there aren't really "rules of thumb" on how much horsepower is required to transcode it.  It also depends on the format.  To transcode the newest H.265 4k video, you either need a large multi-core processor or a very new (Kaby Lake or better) processor with specific HEVC support, along with software that supports it.  I think the future of 4k transcoding will rely on hardware specific/assisted setups, rather than just brute strength. 

 

That said, how set are you on being able to transcode 4k?  It's still a bit bleeding edge so personally I'm waiting for a bit.

[DigitalDivide]

Well, I'm in no rush really. It's just something I was looking into at the moment...so not dead set on it for now.

[dmacias]

I was in a similar situation. I had the C2750 8 core version. I ended up with a used Supermicro X10 and an E3-1240 v3 but I don't do 4k transcoding, just 1080. I wanted to use my old DDR3 ECC also. On the ASRockRack site I would look at E3C* mini-itx boards. They all seem to have 6 sata ports. Socket 1050 if you want to keep your current memory. Not sure on what processor to recommend though. Depend on what board you picked.

I was also looking at Intel hardware decoding with Emby. My chipset doesn't support an Intel CPU with video though. You'd probably have to run Emby in a VM to do hardware decoding.

[Hoopster]

Check out my backup server specs in my sig.  Something like that is probably sufficient for your needs.

 

With RAM prices the way they are these days, utilizing your existing DDR3 RAM will save you some money.

 

The ASRock E3C226D2i is a socket 1150 board so you can use an older Haswell/Broadwell CPU which you can pick up fairly cheap on eBay.  It supports i3/i5/i7/Pentium/Celeron and Xeon v3 and v4 processors so a lot of CPU choices depending on how much horsepower you want.  My i5 4590 has a passmark score of 7267 and >2100 single-thread rating.  You  could get up to three 1080p streams out of that CPU if nothing else is going on with the server.  Of course you could step down to an i3  4160 and get >5000 passmarks which is all you need for a single stream and NAS functions plus a few dockers.

 

This board also has IPMI, which is a huge help in managing a headless system and it has the 6 SATA III ports you are seeking.

 

As others have said, 4K transcoding is the great unknown.  If you are serious about that you want a Kaby Lake or Coffee Lake CPU.  With those you are looking at DDR4 RAM and a lot of money right now.  I have a Skylake Xeon in my main server and I have never tried 4K with it, but, Kaby Lake/Coffee Lake would handle it better due to built-in HEVC support.

Edited January 29, 2018 by Hoopster

[HellDiverUK]

Emby and Plex can both do hardware transcoding now, using Intel Quicksync.  Of course, your C-series doesn't have a GPU so no Quicksync, it's more geared towards network operations with it's QuickAssist technology.  

 

I use an Celeron N3160 which is a 4W chip, and using Quicksync I can get at least 4x 1080p transcodes going no problem.

[Hoopster]

Definitely concur with HellDiver that a CPU with QuickSync will help a lot with transcoding.  Both Haswell CPUs I mentioned support QuickSync.  It makes a very noticeable difference in transcoding with Plex (if you have a Plex Pass) as you can enable hardware encoding through the integrated GPU and offload this task from the CPU.

[dmacias]

Emby and Plex can both do hardware transcoding now, using Intel Quicksync.  Of course, your C-series doesn't have a GPU so no Quicksync, it's more geared towards network operations with it's QuickAssist technology.  
 
I use an Celeron N3160 which is a 4W chip, and using Quicksync I can get at least 4x 1080p transcodes going no problem.

I use Emby. Are doing this in a docker or VM? I was think about swapping out my CPU and upgrading my motherboard to an X10SLH-F because you need the Intel C226 chipset or greater that supports the integrated graphics.

[HellDiverUK]

13 hours ago, dmacias said:

16 hours ago, HellDiverUK said:

Emby and Plex can both do hardware transcoding now, using Intel Quicksync.  Of course, your C-series doesn't have a GPU so no Quicksync, it's more geared towards network operations with it's QuickAssist technology.  
 
I use an Celeron N3160 which is a 4W chip, and using Quicksync I can get at least 4x 1080p transcodes going no problem.

I use Emby. Are doing this in a docker or VM? 

 

Docker.  I use Plex, but I see no reason why Emby wouldn't work the same.

 

See: 

 

Edited January 30, 2018 by HellDiverUK

[dmacias]

 
Docker.  I use Plex, but I see no reason why Emby wouldn't work the same.
 
See: 
 

Thanks I'm gonna give this a try.

[John_M]

FWIW I use the Plex docker to manage my media library and as I have plenty of disk space I use the Optimize feature to transcode the main archive files (MKVs ripped from BluRays and DVDs) to a couple of useful resolutions/qualities and store the resulting MP4 files back on the array. That way there's no need for real-time transcoding and I can use my more powerful CPUs elsewhere.

[vanes]

i run tiny arock j4205-itx 6 disks. 3disks in array, 1 parity, 2ssd cache pool. 2sata on chipset, 2sata onboard sata-controller + 2sata same pci-e sata controller. As u see there is no powerr in this cpu, only 2000 passmark, but it plays, trasncode 4k hevc 10bit very well, because of intel graphics with full support of 4k UHD hevc 10bit etc decode/encode/transcode..... if you want cpu that support all modern video standarts you should look at kaby-lake series... sorry for my english =)

emby/plex working as they should, shortly speaking - any video on any device! hardware transcoding working in docker containers.  On my config Plex works slightly better than emby.

Edited February 7, 2018 by vanes