Intel i5-7400 HEVC h.265 decoding

[RogueRequest]

I am wanting to buy a PC pretty much for the sole purpose of playing back HEVC h.265 encoded .mkv files. I really don't want to spend much more than $600, if that. I was wondering if anyone had any experience, or know how, about playing these files on a PC sporting a Intel i5-7400 CPU? I've tried to do my own research on this, but very little of what I've found has to do with encoding, almost all of it refers to decoding. If you know something about this, I would be really appreciative of an answer as I'd like to pick something in the next month or so.

 

[Smartrior]

Better to buy new ZEN cpu instead of old i5 7400, much better of encoding and decoding for the same price

 

[k1114]

Video playback is decoding. Encoding would be for video editors so the articles you found about decoding is what you want.

Zen has no igpu right now so no support for hevc so suggesting a cpu doesn't make much sense since you don't want to be doing cpu based playback. Price/performance for the cpu side maybe better but you'd have to factor in a gpu for total price.

Technically even atoms can do 4k but it depends on the player and I've seen issues with pentiums doing 4k because the igpu wasn't doing anything. An i5 will be plenty and should never run into issues even if the player has gpu decoder issues. If it's just 1080p then you can save money and go lower.

 

[RogueRequest]

Sorry, I don't know why I encode when meant decode. I was hoping that I could buy a pre-built PC just for the purpose of playing 720p and 1080p files, no 4K needed. I asked about i5-7400 because I've been able to find a lot of pre-built PCs on Amazon and Dell in the price range that I am looking at that just happen to have those i5's. Right now I am using VLC, is it a possibility that it's what's causing the issue?

 

[k1114]

So you are looking to buy because your current pc is not playing smoothly? What are its specs? You might be able to solve that issue and not have to buy something new.

 

[RogueRequest]

Right now the cheap laptop I'm using has a Intel Celeron N3050 and 4GB of RAM. I only bought it because it was $225 at the time. I've tried a couple different media player, I normally use VLC, but the playback is choppy and will often have blurry white streaks. My CPU is maxed, but then again it stays between 35%-75% even when I'm doing nothing.

 

[k1114]

You are better off just buying a new pc. An i5 would be more than enough.

 

[RogueRequest]

Thank you very much, it'll save me quite a bit of money and a lot of headache, especially considering all I want to do is watch videos.

 

[Smartrior]

Video playback is decoding. Encoding would be for video editors so the articles you found about decoding is what you want.

Zen has no igpu right now so no support for hevc so suggesting a cpu doesn't make much sense since you don't want to be doing cpu based playback. Price/performance for the cpu side maybe better but you'd have to factor in a gpu for total price.

Technically even atoms can do 4k but it depends on the player and I've seen issues with pentiums doing 4k because the igpu wasn't doing anything. An i5 will be plenty and should never run into issues even if the player has gpu decoder issues. If it's just 1080p then you can save money and go lower.

What do you mean zen have no IGPU so there is no HEVC? Really? For good quality HEVC you need CPU, not gpu

 

[k1114]

He wants decoding not encoding.