[ale] Is this a good deal

[DJ-Pfulio]

An atom CPU can do transcoding. It just takes longer.  A raspberry pi
can do it to, I suppose. Wouldn't want to guess how long that would take.

How fast any transcode is depends on the software used, the settings for
the transcode output, the input video and the CPU, of course.

If you turn down the quality of the transcode, allow more artifacts,
then the transcoding will be faster.

If you transcode only for playback to those devices, then a $50 Intel
CPU will easily handle it for (2) concurrent 720p streams using Plex
server to automatically transcode for each specific device.  If you
never intend to archive any recordings, I'd go cheap, as previously
outlined.

Your playback devices are picky about the videos they will play. The
chromecast is probably the most picky. I know chromecast and roku will
not play any mpeg2 video.

A current-gen i7 or high-end Ryzen would be total overkill for a media
server even with transcoding.  Look for a CPU with a passmark of 5500 or
better for a relatively "happy transcoding" machine.

If you want to do more than transcoding on the machine concurrently,
then you'll probably want more CPU.

Any Ryzen 1400 or higher is 50% faster than that - most are almost 3x
faster, looking at the passmarks. A few Core i3 CPUs meet this too.  I'm
not up on the current Intel numeric CPU names, sorry.

Some Core i3 CPUs that meet the "happy transcoder" level aren't too
expensive. i3-7300 line looks ok (but I know NOTHING ELSE about it).

For a core i5, seems about $200 for a desktop CPU is the price to get
the minimal "happy transcoding" performance. That doesn't mean any i5
costing that much or more can do it. The 7600K is almost 2x faster than
needed, but not as fast as a cheaper, Ryzen 1600.

Anyways, lots of options.

Nobody can answer the VM question as you ask it.  You didn't say what
the load on the VMs was going to be, which software they would run, how
many TPS reports would be needed daily, etc.  The less precise the
question, the less precise any answer can be.

On 09/04/2017 10:16 AM, Narahari 'n' Savitha wrote:
> Good email.  Thank You
> I am under constant confusion.  I was at the ALE  Sunday meets last
> weekend and before that.  I am trying to build a PC where I can record
> the SiliconDust output to the disk and stream that to my roku or appletv
> or chromecast. (whichever is easy)
> 
> I have gotten great advise about this but what I am have understood so
> far is that a fast CPU is a must for transcoding from the recorded mpeg2
> to .264 format. 
> 
> As Steve has pointed out if I get an i7 (dont know about Ryzen as
> reliable) and put like 32GB of RAM on it would I be able to do both
> transcoding and run say 2 or 3 VM's on them ? or am I stretching it too
> much.
> 
> -N
> 
> 
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