Server CPU requirements (Intel)

[p3t3rson]

So after being a dedicated MAC guy for a few years now I have decided to build a home server. The main purpose of the server will be ripping Blu-Ray disc as well as storage of the movies, photos and general documents. I plan on running Windows Server Essentials 2012 as an operating system and possibly run a VM. I also want the server to be as fast as possible (reading and writing to drives that is), so I plan on using dedicated RAID cards running in RAID 0+1.

My many question is what particular spec's should I be looking for in a CPU?

• Overall speed
• Support of multi PCI 3.0 lanes for possible multi RAID cards?
• Memory bandwidth?
• Does any of that even matter?

I am not too worry about cost. I am not going to drop a grand on a cpu but whether itss $100, $200 or $300 for the cpu I don't really care.

This will be my first ever dedicated server so I appreciate any feedback that you feel maybe relevant.

[Perineum]

The CPU should be fast enough to run whatever tasks you have it do, other than that it could be a low end i3 if it's just fetching data.

The rest doesn't matter. PCIe 3.0 definitely does not matter. Memory isn't about how fast it is but rather how much of it there is, again, depending on what it's going to be doing.

My Home server is a Q6600, but I don't even run one VM on it.

[3.0charlie]

My Home server (Windows 2008R2) is an i3 2100 with 2Gb of ram, running in Raid 6 7x1Tb Reds using a 3ware 9650SE-8LPML raid card (+1 hot spare). As Peri said, that's about as good as it gets on the cheap. If you need to rip movies, then upgrade the CPU accordingly.

[moocow]

I run a Q6600 with 8GB of RAM that I use to encode stuff. I run 1 VM on it which contain a MySQL and Java web server. It's a tad slow when it comes to encoding. I think I saw someone (CaptVertax?) here selling a crap load of RAID card. Just how many drives are you planning on using?

[p3t3rson]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Think I will just use a G555 or something alone those lines.

[3.0charlie]

The main purpose of the server will be ripping Blu-Ray disc

What is the G555 performance in regards to ripping Blu-Rays?

[moocow]

Originally Posted by 3.0charlie

What is the G555 performance in regards to ripping Blu-Rays?

I suspect not well since it's doesn't have HT, QuickSync, VT-d (but have VT-x) and also lower amount of cache. While an i3 is double the price, it does give you a bit more features. Question is that which encoder can actually take advantage of QuickSync. A quick Googling seem like Handbrake doesn't use QuickSync at all but MediaExpresso does.

[BlueByte]

Its been a bit since I have done anything to do with quicksync or gpu enabled encoders like mediaExpresso... so they may have improved upon it since then. But in my experience ALL assisted encoding techniques offer much worse quality over just brute force cpu power. If you want something quick on your phone then it might be an acceptable loss in quality but if you are archiving video off of blueray or DVD then I would suggest handbrake or something like it.

If you are looking at VMs running a linux OS with handbrake will greatly improve blueray encoding but have 0 effect with DVDs. How many bluerays are you ripping? is time a factor? I am thinking 4 cores would be a minimum if you are looking at a VM setup. and double your RAM requirments to avoid swapping.

[p3t3rson]

Sorry guys, you had answered my questions so I hadn't check back. I have very few Blu-Rays to rip and time is not a factor. I could stick a Blu-Ray in and walk away from it till the next day and so on. My biggest concern was transfer speeds from the server to the clients and was unsure how much the cpu mattered for that.

I am even now considering moving to a NAS like the Synology DS412+ or even the DS1512+. There seems to me limited reason to run a full server with such fast transfer speeds of todays NAS.

[3.0charlie]

I'm sold on Qnap products.