Upgrading Server CPU

[animeking]

today i want to upgrade my cpu. i know i will have to most likely replace the motherboard and ram as well. these are my current specs below: my question what cpu do you guy's recommend that will be 10x better than my current cpu but wont break the bank. I use my server for plex, sonarr, and radarr for media access. im thinking of adding a vm for gaming. my current budget for cpu is no more than $300-$350 but i heard my gpu might not be compatible with some current cpu so hoping to find a cpu that will be fine with my current gpu. any recommendations please?? 

[Zonediver]

50 minutes ago, animeking said:

today i want to upgrade my cpu. i know i will have to most likely replace the motherboard and ram as well. these are my current specs below: my question what cpu do you guy's recommend that will be 10x better than my current cpu but wont break the bank. I use my server for plex, sonarr, and radarr for media access. im thinking of adding a vm for gaming. my current budget for cpu is no more than $300-$350 but i heard my gpu might not be compatible with some current cpu so hoping to find a cpu that will be fine with my current gpu. any recommendations please??

Your CPU has a passmark of ~6163

10x faster means at least an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X (64.250 passmarks) - matter of expense: ~$ 2.268.-

The question is now:  What is more important? 10x faster or the price limit of 350.-

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by Zonediver

[Djinn]

I would suggest the intel 10100 then you don't need the gpu for anything you can just transcode with the igpu and quick sync. 

 

I put one on an asrock steel legend b460 board and it works great

 

[CybranNakh]

If you are replacing your ram and your motherboard and CPU what is the budget for all combined? Since it does not seem like you have a lot of extras, you can save some on the motherboard and toss more into the CPU. I have built roughly 10-15 rigs for people and for unraid, my recommendation would be to go AMD Ryzen. Depending on your exact budget, you can get a (used) Ryzen 3900x for roughly $350 on eBay. 

 

For VMs you will want to allocate at least 4 cores to it. As for your VMs, you should check why your CPU usage is so high. I have a similar CPU with no such limitations (with no gaming VMs). If you do NOT do a gaming VM, you can use the beta35 (and some googling about drivers) in order to passthrough your current GPU to plex for hardware transcoding (really takes the load off the CPU for plex). 

 

If you do want a gaming VM and don't want to give plex a GPU for hardware transcoding, then I think a Ryzen platform CPU is your best bet. Unraid lets you allocate cores to specific dockers, VMs, etc. and AMD is the rising star as far as multicore tasks go. Hope this helps! 

[Zonediver]

FYI: The "Nvidia-solution" for Plex has a hard limitation: Only 2 Streams for transcoding - with the iGPU of an Intel-CPU, this limit does not exist.

[Hoopster]

33 minutes ago, Zonediver said:

FYI: The "Nvidia-solution" for Plex has a hard limitation: Only 2 Streams for transcoding

That's true with GTX/consumer level GPUs; however, the Quadro and other Professional Nvidia GPU models allow "unlimited" streams.  For that reason, the Quadro P2000 is an extremely popular choice for those wanting to do hardware transcoding without an Intel CPU with iGPU/QSV.

[CybranNakh]

5 hours ago, Zonediver said:

FYI: The "Nvidia-solution" for Plex has a hard limitation: Only 2 Streams for transcoding - with the iGPU of an Intel-CPU, this limit does not exist.

This is true but not final. While consumers Nvidia cards have a 2 stream limit. A quick google search or Reddit search will yield a lot of people with a solution. But can’t be discussed on this forum

[Zonediver]

4 hours ago, Hoopster said:

That's true with GTX/consumer level GPUs; however, the Quadro and other Professional Nvidia GPU models allow "unlimited" streams.  For that reason, the Quadro P2000 is an extremely popular choice for those wanting to do hardware transcoding without an Intel CPU with iGPU/QSV.

...but this P2000 is horrible expensive... € 464.- Pfffff... 🤪

Edited December 5, 2020 by Zonediver