I bought one of these to use as a Plex server on Ubuntu. I have a small library and do only do 3-4 streams locally at most. I plan on sticking with 4gb ram but switching to a 100gb sata ssd from another project. other than speed, is there much value in getting a larger nvme hard drive? My current plex library files don’t use a much HD space, <25gb.
You should really upgrade to 8GB of RAM at least.
NVMe drives are extremely fast with small files, which is what PMS mostly consists of. If you already have a SATA SSD, just use that.
Would this be a decent box for a dedicated Bedrock Minecraft server? Its really hard to find a definitive answer for a BDS but it would seem to run decent on a 2 core CPU with 4-6 players max. Does anyone have any experience with this?
Yes, it would be OK for that. The clock speed is relatively high for just a 2 core CPU, which is all that bedrock should use. Make sure to use an SSD for the OS to maximize performance.
I have 2 NVME screws left over if anyone would like one. Let me know and I’m happy to drop one in the mail for you.
Ebay had them in stock this morning so I grabbed one to give it a try. If it works, that will be one more docker I can remove off my server.
I got one that arrived today. I guess I’m making it a pfSense box since I already have a QuickSync machine. I’ll replace the 2nd gen intel PfSense build at my office that I did a few months ago and re-purpose that or ebay it.
Had to order a low profile bracket for my quad port nic which will take a while to come in.
Just registered to confirm that the HP 290 does support 32GB memory. I received mine today and I swapped the processor, HDD and memory with an i5 9400, 128GB SSD and 32GB (2x16GB DDR4 2166MHz) RAM. I installed an i350-T4v2 and its currently being used with pfsense virtualized on ESXi 7 on my new homelab server. Power consumption with 4 VMs is definitely 30-40W lower than my Optiplex 7020 + Xeon E3 1225 V3
Edit: Idle power consumption with 5 VMs is 16-17W as compared to 35-40W with my earlier server.
Edit 2: As someone had asked earlier, passthrough works after upgrading the processor. I have passed two ports of the i350 for pfSense.
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Just wondering how the video card and system have been performing? Thinking of building one out to play minecraft java.
Thanks for sharing!
That’s exactly how I am planning to use mine: virtualized and using PCIE passthrough for the network card.
I have a couple 32GB Samsung DDR4 2666MHz sticks that I will test to check if the system also supports 64GB total RAM.
Updates when my machine arrive later this week
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So I got time to test power consumption with my i5-9400 16gigs ram and a 1650 video card. Boot up consumes about 35-40 watts. Updating steam library about 22-28 watts. About 22-25 watts idle.
With the 1650 pulled out boot up drops to 20-25 watts. Updating steam library 19-25 watts. About 13-16 watts idling with no software running.
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Started everything from scratch on 19.04 on another HP 290 and I’m still seeing full cpu usage at 4 streams. They start buffering with a 5th. HW acceleration is on and working for both decode and encode on HEVC Main 10 → AVC 1080p 8Mbps video.
HEVC shouldn’t take any more CPU toll than h.264 with quicksync.
Same results for 20.04?
Yes sir, I thought so too, but for some reason, 1 HEVC 8/10bit 1080p transcode takes ~50% CPU usage. It doesn’t always stay ~50%+ goes up and down.
Edit: Added images.
Does the same thing happen when you’re not performing audio transcodes? Because that is taking place 100% on the CPU.
Sadly, yes it does this even when I’m not performing audio transcodes. The graphs are flying everywhere, settles down a little after a bit (I’m guessing after having enough buffer). I am having suspicion whether my Quick Sync isn’t working properly? Or am i forgetting to change certain settings.
It’s possible, but the CPU is settling pretty quickly (compared to transcoded audio) I wouldn’t worry about it too much.