Desktop PC spec for virtualisation and transcoding
I'm looking to replace my home desktop PC (Ubuntu) with something a bit better. Budget around £4-500. It mainly runs a couple of virtual machines (VirtualBox) and acts as a media PC with Plex (which means video files get transcoded on the fly, which includes some 3D HD titles). Both of these are areas that the current PC struggles with sometimes (A8-6410 CPU with 12GB RAM and SSD). To be fair it copes with everything now as long as I don't try to do both at once but if I watch a 3D title I have to shut down all the VMs, and any more than a couple of VMs at the same time will push it. I got a good deal on a 500GB Crucial SSD so that's prompted me into building a new box around it and the forthcoming Ubuntu LTS. I found some desktops based around an i7 and 16GB which is the direction I'm heading in at the moment but I'm open to suggestion. I assume the graphics capability is of some importance for transcoding, is Intel on-board enough? (I won't be playing games.) I'm happy to build for myself although for a modest premium would buy pre-built (no need for Windows though!). -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER
On Wed, 13 Apr 2016 13:24:59 +0100 Mark Rogers <mark@more-solutions.co.uk> allegedly wrote:
I'm looking to replace my home desktop PC (Ubuntu) with something a bit better. Budget around £4-500.
Mark About a month ago I bought a new Zoostorm i7 from ebuyer. (One of these : http://www.ebuyer.com/735874-zoostorm-desktop-pc-7260-3047). I paid £20 more than the current price too... The machine is good value, and blindingly fast compared to my old second gen i3. It is also very, vey quiet. I added a 120 Gig SSD to hold the OS only so it boots very quickly. Like you, I do a lot of transcoding, but not on the fly. I have a lot of DVDS that I have ripped over the years when I was commuting daily to London (I used to watch them on a PSP would you believe). Now that I only watch the videos on my PC, or tablet (or on the home TV) of course the resolution at which I originally ripped the DVDs is way too low. So I am re-ripping. Now a rip of a DVD with handbrake takes typically 10-15 minutes to get a 1.5 Gb MP4 file (encoded with x264) that looks good on a 48" TV. But: The downside is that the on-board graphics chip is crap. It simply cannot cope with playback (using VLC) of even the lower resolution files I have stored at the moment. I have now resorted to re-using the old Nvidia GeForce GT220 from my old i3 so that I get decent performance. But that seems to have killed the transcoding performance because it now takes around 25-30 minutes (what I used to see on the i3) to rip a DVD. I think this is weird and I must be wrong here because everything I can find about handbrake says that it /doesn't/ use the GPU for transcoding (except in certain circumstances and on windows only) See https://trac.handbrake.fr/wiki/GPUAcceleration and references to handbrake in http://www.extremetech.com/computing/128681-the-wretched-state-of-gpu-transc... What I really need to do is some direct comparisons of ripping the same DVD with and without the Nividia card in place before I invest in a more up to date GPU. Which brings me to the next bad point about the PC - the PSU (at 250 watts) is way too underspecced to handle the addition of a decent GPU (or even too many disks). On balance though, given that you get a skylake i7 and 16 Gig of DDR4, I'd say that the Zoostorm was a bargain. Mick --------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------
On 13 April 2016 at 15:25, mick <mbm@rlogin.net> wrote:
But:
The downside is that the on-board graphics chip is crap. It simply cannot cope with playback (using VLC) of even the lower resolution files I have stored at the moment. I have now resorted to re-using the old Nvidia GeForce GT220 from my old i3 so that I get decent performance.
That's interesting; the onboard HD 510 provided by the i7-6700 should be at least OK and on a par with the GT220 if my reading of the chart here is correct: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gpu-hierarchy,review-33383.html (The 530 is listed but not the 510 so I've had to guess where the 510 should be in that table.) The i7-6700K in contrast has the HD 530 which from that same chart should be the match of any cheap desktop graphics card, which as led me towards building my own box (and typically inflated the total cost): http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/H4mtXL The component choices are pretty much guesses so advice welcome. It does give the option to substantially increase RAM (max 64GB) which is helpful on a machine running VMs.
Which brings me to the next bad point about the PC - the PSU (at 250 watts) is way too underspecced to handle the addition of a decent GPU (or even too many disks).
Another reason I'm looking at a self-build.
On balance though, given that you get a skylake i7 and 16 Gig of DDR4, I'd say that the Zoostorm was a bargain.
That is a good point however. My component list is about £150 more and doesn't include a build... Decisions decisions.... Further input really appreciated! -- Mark Rogers // More Solutions Ltd (Peterborough Office) // 0844 251 1450 Registered in England (0456 0902) 21 Drakes Mews, Milton Keynes, MK8 0ER
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