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.
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.
If money is tight, then the cheapest solution would probably then be an nvidia GPU with NVENC support, since you wouldn’t have to upgrade anything to make it work (assuming it fits in your case of course) . I believe I managed to grab my 1050TI for about $100USD, and it supports many, many streams, especially with the NVENC unlock driver patch, and my cpu sits pretty at maybe 10% usage tops.
Money isn’t too tight - I have a $250 Amazon credit right now to use on whatever.
I’d really prefer to upgrade the CPU because it’s already overclocked and still struggling. When I host a game like Space Engineers, I get massive lag spikes as it tries to keep up.
The CPU is just not enough for what I would like to do.
Both are good ideas! A newer Gen cpu is never a bad thing in this hobby. Either method will do you good, so if you’d rather have the extra cpu horsepower of a newer cpu, you should go for it!
I have no opinion or knowledge of which Intel cpu is best for you besides “bigger number = more better” so hopefully the other responses with advice are accurate. Good luck!