Question Thinking of a NAS...

[Anomaly_76]

So, long story short, between weird audio issues, suspicions of a faulty unit, and Asus' notoriously slow customer service, I elected to replace my Tuf Gaming B550-Plus with a B550 Aorus Master about 3-4 weeks ago.

Whereupon I found that apparently Windows or Realtek has decided to stop treating the rear speaker output as a variable stereo out in 2-channel mode. Worked nine months ago, now only gives rear surround audio in 5.1 mode. And no front surround outputs? WTH...

Asus, however, agreed that there is an issue with the board, and has agreed to replace it. I am currently waiting on an advance shipment of a replacement, whereupon I am to return the original.

The only reason I might have to swap the Asus back into my gaming rig is a whopping 200-400 Mhz difference in boost speed (not worth it, obviously).

Though I do have an MSI B450M Bazooka / 1700 and an AsRock B450M-HDV / 3600X setup laying around, I've thought about using the replacement Asus board as a NAS to allow me to turn off my gaming rig. I had originally planned to use an old Dell Inspiron 546s (Athlon II x3 400e), but after a couple failed attempts to boot and not recognizing the drive I connected to it, it started giving a keyboard error.

Two main questions, the Asus board supports a few AM4 APUs, and I'm fairly confident that integrated graphics would be sufficient for a NAS, I read somewhere that you need Nvidia graphics for transcoding. Is this true, and if so, would a basic GPU like a GT710 or GT730 suffice for this? Also, recommendations for a CPU for this sort of thing? Thinking of some sort of compact / slimline footprint, likely laying flat.

If it matters, the main use will be a Plex media server.

 

[gggplaya]

You don't need any GPU to transcode, you can use the CPU transcode. You need a passmark score of 2000 for every 1080p stream. So for instance if the cpu has a passmark score of 9000, then you'll be able to handle 4 streams with confidence, the 5th stream would have issues. The ryzen 1700 has a passmark of 14,000 so it should be able to handle 6-7 streams no problem.

The 1700 and the 3600x do not have an APU built in. Depending on which NAS software you use, might have issues during setup with no graphics output. Might want to through some super cheap gpu in there so you can hook it up to a monitor.

I prefer CPU transcode on my plex. The output is cleaner with less macroblocking. Also when using a 3060ti to transcode, when I tried to fastforward and/or scroll back it would constantly get hung up and I'd have to restart the movie. Doesn't do that with cpu transcoding.

However, Nvidia recently unlocked nearly all their GPU's to allow for 8 transcodes, which is nice if you wanted to go that route. Also CPU transcode will use more power while transcoding.

For my rig, I use a 4750GE AMD processor I got from ebay. It's a 35w tdp chip, so it will be less power hungry. But I also use my plex server as an actual server for other things, not just plex. You can also consider the 5600GE on ebay as well, they're about the same price with roughly the same passmark score of 18000. Both chips are APU's, so no worries about needing a graphics card for setup and maintenance.

 

[Anomaly_76]

Replacement board arrived Saturday. I've considered a few different ideas, including those suggested here.

This board supports 4600, 4650, 4655, 4700, 4750, 5600, 5650, 5700, 5750 G / GE variants, 5700, 5800 X3D variants, as well as the garden variety 3000, 4000, 5000 series CPUs.

I found a 3400G on Craigslist this morning for $70 (shipping not included), but apparently it's not supported, which seems to be a B550 thing, not just this board.

AFAIK the X3Ds' key selling point is the increased L3 cache, but aren't these integrated graphics as well? Seems to me an X3D would do quite well for gaming or an HTPC / media NAS, and I've thought about building a rack-mount / slimline setup along these lines, but would be somewhat limited in height.

Ideally, I'd like to swap my gaming rig to a 5800X3D, and use the 5900X for the Asus board. However, being on a fixed income, I definitely would like the take the best budget savvy route here. I'm also not sure the 200-400 Mhz difference is worth swapping out boards again on the gaming rig. (Aorus B550 Master gets 4600-4800 boost, the Asus board got 5000-5025).

So I've considered just selling the replacement board and using one of the two existing platforms as a double-duty desktop / NAS. Mostly because my father's laptop is threatening to come apart on him and that would serve both needs. I'm not sure if his 70" (2022 HiSense A6) does picture-in-picture between HDMIs though, and he prefers to be able to do things while he's watching TV.

Negating that, starting from scratch on a budget with only the Tuf B550-Plus, a 2x8 kit of supported GSkill FlareX DDR4-3200, a 2 TB Crucial MX500, and possibly a 500GB / 1TB WD Blue SN570, what might one suggest? Since the 1700 has a stock AMD cooler and the 3600X / 5900X have Scythe Mugen 5s, ideally, I'd like any processor I buy at this point to include a cooler if possible. And no, I don't mind eBay, that's where my 3600X came from.