I’m looking to upgrade my Plex and game server. I currently have an i5-4690K with 16 GB DDR3 and it’s struggling a lot. My PSU is a 850W gold rated EVGA from 2017 so I don’t think it needs upgraded quite yet since I’ve been way under the wattage for most of its life.
I was looking at something like a 13400 but I’m not sure if it’s the best choice or what to pair it with.
Intel’s not good for power efficiency. Id recommend any old entry level b550 AM4 motherboard, drop a ryzen 5600x in it, buy 32 gigs of dirt cheap DDR4. You’ll be out the door $250 and be in amazing shape using half the power of Intel’s hungry 13th gen 14nm+++++++++. If you wanna spend a little more get a 5800x for 2 more cores. It’ll handle all your server stuff no sweat.
No Quicksync with AMD which means you’re stuck on CPU transcoding, and much higher power usage for that.
For comparison a 7th gen and up Intel iGPU with quicksync can do something like 20-30 1080p Plex transcodes.
Could you buy a 5600G instead ?
I’d really like to utilize Intel QuickSync. Anything not capable of that is a deal breaker for me.
If they want to transcode they’ll need a dedicated GPU in that instance because they’ll lose QuickSync.
I’ve been pretty happy with the Intel T series processors. Running 2 i7-6700Ts and one i7-8700T. Both have a TDP of 35 watts.
I’m using them in Proxmox machines and they’ve been super reliable while using very little power.
Just double checked and the 13400 is 65W just like the 5600x, which has no iGPU. I know AM4 and DDR4 would greatly reduce the cost of this upgrade but I’d like this to last as long as possible for me.
If you’re mainly using this server for plex, then a 13 series Intel with quicksync will be the way to go, from what I read the newest generation of quicksync is really good for transcodes. That and more RAM, can never have enough ram!
Is plex transcoding what’s making your server struggle? Even with older gens, I would think using hardware transcodes would keep the cpu load light. At least that’s what I noticed when I dropped an nvidia card into my server (no integrated graphics in my cpu)
Yes, Plex transcoding is awful. Hardware transcodes aren’t possible on that build because I have nothing that supports it. The earliest QuickSync capable Intel chips are the 8000 series.
Fyi Intel and AMD don’t count TDP the same way.
In a sane world heat output = power consumption (yes not exactly but for our purposes it works) but Intel has a fudge factor to it’s TDP number and AMD straight up doesn’t count power or heat output in it’s TDP formula and basically just makes it up (the formula includes such factors as “how hot should the part run ideally?”). They more or less agree in general but just because the 2 numbers are the same doesn’t mean they are comparable.