Should You Buy an Intel Arc for Your Media Server?

[@WolfgangsChannel]

To try everything Brilliant has to offer-free-for a full 30 days, visit brilliant.org/Wolfgang/ . The first 200 of you will get 20% off Brilliant’s annual premium subscription. LINKS: Asrock Intel Arc A380 Challenger: geni.us/lAgN (Amazon) Asrock Intel Arc A380 Low-Profile: geni.us/p7bi (Amazon) jellyfin-ffmpeg QuickSync Benchmark Script by ironicbadger and cptmorgan-rh: github.com/ironicbadger/quicksync_calc ASPM info command: pastebin.com/GrRrDJmW ASPM tuning script by Luis R. Rodriguez: gist.github.com/baybal/b499fc5811a7073df0c03ab8da4be904

[@WolfgangsChannel]

i did not

[@pr0jectSkyneT]

@@WolfgangsChannel I'm having a bit of trouble with the ASPM script. I get these errors ./aspm_tuning: line 80: enable_aspm_byte: command not found ./aspm_tuning: line 85: enable_aspm_byte: command not found Root complex: Device 00:1c.0 not present

[@pr0jectSkyneT]

I basically followed your video in adding these lines to the aspm_tuning script ASPM_SETTING=3 ENDPOINT="03:00.0" enable_aspm_byte $ENDPOINT ENDPOINT="09:00.0" enable_aspm_byte $ENDPOINT

[@BlackRedDead1943]

when you just "have to" explain to answer a stupid question xD also very creative sponsoring - i still wonder what an online learning course can tell me about our (german) water distribution system??? xD Edit: sad you missed the RX 6400 for around 120€ (new!) - that thing is a real low TDP (53W official) / (relative) high performance (3.57 TFLOPS (FP32) official, with 12CU (768SP /​ 48TMU /​ 32ROP), 12 RT Cores, 1MB L2-Cache, 16MB L3-Cache) beast! ;-)

[@figo038]

Hi Wolfgangs, thank for the video and the instructif channel. On the end on the video, why you don't choose a Intel i3 7100t for better consommation ? Have good day

[@lukas_ls]

Unfortunately, the PCIe Slot can’t really provide 75W. That’s a common myth but not entirely true. It’s true but under certain conditions: The specification rates the Slot at 5.5A on the 12V rail which is only 66W at 12V. But at the same time the 3.3V rail may Provide 3A too which is 9.9W. Therefore in theory the slot could provide 9.9+66W =74.9W but that’s only true when you use both 3.3V and 12V rails simultaneously which is usually not the case on GPUs. GPUs usually only the use 12V input. Implementing circuits to use both 3.3V and 12V just for additional 9.9W max is simply not worth it.

[@WolfgangsChannel]

Ah, good to know!

[@b0ne91]

The AsRock A380 doesn't even draw 75W in Furmark and I think has a 60 something watts power limit. They could've just made it without the 8 pin, similar to what Sparkle did.

[@flintfrommother3gaming]

Wouldn't that be too inefficient to even leverage 3.3V rail just for that 10 Watts? Just asking because I don't have any idea how computer voltage works.

[@snowwsquire]

This is true by specs but usually a mobo will let you pull a lot more than 75w from the pcie slot

[@marsovac]

this is partially true, the 3.3V is used for PCI-E signalling circuitry, which is little to none consumption compared to the 12V rail, but still already used. But yeah introducing ciruitry to use the rest of it for other purposes would be a waste.

[@owlmostdead9492]

The Arc a380 is still the best GPU for a dedicated streaming build, since the newer iGPU's only support decoding AV1 and not encoding

[@outlawkings6133]

I want to build a second pc for streaming the signal from my capture card. I want to use intel arc a380 elf or maybe asrock but I want to ask to help with choice of other parts. What is the cheapest solution for my purpose can be. I will be very thankful if someone will help me with this.

[@owlmostdead9492]

​@@outlawkings6133 The absolute cheapest way to stream in good quality would be an i3 12100 with it's iGPU. You won't be able to stream 4k60 with it or in AV1 but Intel's QuickSync H264 looks better than Nvidia's nvenc h264 and anything up to 1440p60 or low action 4k30 is fine on the iGPU. If you absolutely want AV1 support it'll have to be the a380 but you'll need a CPU that can do re-bar, which for Intel means at least a 10th gen CPU or for AMD you'll need Zen 2+/3 so a 3600 or preferably a 5500.

[@owlmostdead9492]

​@@outlawkings6133 The absolute cheapest way for a dedicated streaming pc would be a system with the i3 12100, the iGPU can stream anything up to 1440p60 and slow action at 4k30 max. Intel's quickSync has currently the best quality for h264 and h265. You can then later add an a380 to the system if you want 4k60 and AV1. The mainboard is probably going to be the most tricky one because of the PCIe slots and lanes. I'd recommend the AsRock Riptide H670, it has a 16x slot for a GPU and a 4x slot that unfortunately goes through the chipset. In a perfect world you'd want 8x for a GPU and two 4x slots directly to the CPU for up to dual capture cards.

[@sitaroartworks]

@@outlawkings6133 go ASRock, they have a better VBIOS compared to the Sparkle line. Less noisy, especially on Linux.

[@lakerssuperman]

I just moved from an iGPU 630 in my server to an A380. While I did it to add AV1 to the mix, it is also significantly faster than the already fast 630 iGPU was with x264 and x265 video. If your system is otherwise fast and capable the ARC card is an amazing way to cheaply add first class transcoding capabilities to your system.

[@DamageUwU]

Same here. The only thing that annoys the shit out of me is the driver in WIndows whichs hud autostart cant be shut off on log-in lmao - just a annoying thing But the Card is awesome

[@Reflexiony]

Interesting, how much more power consumption do you now have to record in everyday life?

[@b0ne91]

While I do have the ASRock A380 in my system too, I just wanted to point out that the Sparkle A380 actually seems to NOT require an external power connector and thus, you should be able to use it even in older office system or with TFX PSUs. Might be harder to find though.

[@JKK_85]

You can also just use an adapter from molex or sata, given the low power consumption of the card there's no danger in using one.

[@EbonySaints]

​​@@JKK_85This. As someone who has brutally overclocked theirs, you aren't going to be pushing it much past 75W with that heatsink, and most definitely not for video encoding/transcoding. There's also a 2-Slot, LP version from AsRock that is usually priced the same without the 8-Pin, so if it's available in your region, it might be worth a shot.

[@b0ne91]

@@EbonySaintsSo glad that one is widely available now. When I bought my A380, even the one used in this video was REALLY hard to find still.

[@pat_e]

I would suggest Tiger-Lake Intel CPU, as Tiger-Lake also enabled HW AV1 - Decoding (which means: you can keep smaller AV1 in your Jellyfin Library and HW-transcode if needed from AV1 to H264 or H265).

[@Sebyllis7350k]

Except AV1 is only outperforming everything else at low bitrate, and we're talking about 3-6 Mbps here. When looking at 40 Mbps and above, which would include most movie files, it performs *exceptionally* poorly. Another thing is that it isn't supported by video editing software at all, so you would need to do a lossy convert before editing.

[@tteqhu]

​@@Sebyllis7350k Most movie files over 40Mbps? it's around blu-ray standard speed though- But I would generally say:avoid transcoding at all costs. If you need to transcode it's for 2 reasons: 1. One part of the connection can't sustain x speed. 2. Compatibility reasons (h.264 is go-to for compatibility though) And please share what have you observed struggling with AV1 - noise - like details/texture?

[@jeffsan0.5]

aren't Tiger-Lake Mobile and embedded only? that would mean new Chip and new motherboard, that board can also only run that cpu with zero upgrade potential, which imo is pretty odd to just for home media server.

[@annix493]

@@jeffsan0.5Yes…..except you’re definitely not considering the benefits here. For example take a look at ITX boards with things like the 1145G4, N100, J6412 (with AV1) or N6005 (without AV1). Things like the Asrock “N100DC-ITX”, “BKHD ITX60D-L26 ITX”, “BKHD 1449NP”, or “BKHD-N510X-NAS-I22X”. Those boards have up to 6 x Intel 2.5Gb NICs, 6 Integrated SATA ports, and (up to) 2 x M.2 B+M sockets….plus an additional 2 PCIe lanes up for grabs with an adapter on the A+E socket if ya dirty (perfect for a literally $5 16GB Optane module). So yes - they are integrated, but - they are also ~£100 right with included 11th/12th gen quad core CPU that supports AV1 QuickSync (or just fantastic Plex HEVC). All for the cost of less than an A380, and at ridiculously low TDPs. If I hadn’t JUST built a new server based on an I5-8400, I would be going for one of those….okay, I might still anyway. I mean just LOOK AT EM. I challenge anyone to tell me that 10Gb of NIC, 6 SATA Ports, and 11th Gen QuickSync all on a single board doesn’t make for an unreal home server. Hell, I’ve paid nearly as much for just an HBA by itself in the past.

[@noobulon4334]

​@@Sebyllis7350k 1080p blu ray rips regularly come in under 40mbps, I was playing with some samples recently and getting vmaf scores of 97 with a 4.5mbps output

[@DavidHnilica]

man, You're good. That's "exactly" the question I was asking myself when I saw the ARC releases this week. And You got the video in before the end of the week. Well done ;-)

[@MrMunkyMeat]

I use the Arc A380 as a dedicated encoder for my streaming set up. I use a PowerColor Red Devil rx6900XT as the main card. Does amazingly well. Like, I have not seen dropped frames even testing in streaming 4K content. 10/10 would do again.

[@Ken-ix6vx]

The king of power efficient homelabs is here with new information! These types of videos really hit my niche interest spot in.

[@thescandalchannel]

haha it gets interested, if you come acros certain points. i made my unraid server extactly with this target, but it works until you reach some points of no returne. My complet gear of 120Tb Unraid Server, 1 Wifi 6 AP, Multi gig Switch and Mini Firewall PC use around 80W on idle with a Standby DS1815+. I use also just a i3 9100 on a Gigabyte C246M-WU4, but with HBA and all the Drives, its hard to get lower.

[@bobtheunplayer]

The 1W GPU idle is part of the Intel Deep link recipe. Enabling ASPM is one step, but a 12th gen or Intel CPU with and iGPU is needed. The iGPU is set as the default graphics output in the BIOS. The monitor should be plugged into the motherboard graphics output. The 1W idle comes from the GPU doing nothing, not even rendering the desktop. The Intel driver automatically select which GPU to use depending on the rendering workload.

[@Sebyllis7350k]

eGPU stands for external GPU, typically in the form of Thunderbolt or oculink dock. The term you should be using is discrete GPU.

[@cosminpetrila252]

He's using it as iGPU which stands for integrated gpu

[@Vader294]

I just found your channel and it's made me a lot more inspired to finally spin up my own media server. Keep up the amazing work.

[@wildefyri]

So outside the edge cases you mentioned, it only really makes sense to buy this card if you require / desire AV1 encoding. Good for data hoarders who are trying minimize the amount of disk space a library takes up (plus future proofing their library's) or if you want to do some kind of server / capture card setup when major platforms start supporting AV1 streams

[@evilspoons]

You should compute total energy used to transcode the movie (as an efficiency benchmark) - I know some people do streaming where encoding happens on-demand, but others will do a pre-rendered lower quality transcode (I'm doing this with Plex at the moment). Average power used in watts times time it takes to do the conversion in seconds gives you joules (or watt-seconds, if you want to call it that.) I believe there's enough information in your video to work it out from the frame rate and the power figures, but as a future talking point it could be handy.

[@obsoletepowercorrupts]

Here is some information to help you. Some PCI-e slots only provide about 50watts of power (even if it can be 66Watts on 12 volts), and so others provide up to 75Watts of power. What's more is that the additional power connector means an NVMe slot (which has very little provision for power) can take a graphics card by means of _(as one route even though there are others)_ connecting that power connector type you point towards in the video. There are work arounds (less popular) that people use such as mining riser breakouts with additional power input and also external GPU enclosures. The nature of a power connector being 8pin instead of molex (or multiple molex) or other power connector is a different topic although there can sometimes be a ven-diagram overlap in the subject. As an aside, it is worth mentioning that some PCI-e slots provide about 10Watts (very approximately for 3.3 volt rail) and could be added to by floppy power connector. A thing that is interesting is how the combination power-source Wattages share approximate amounts of power compared to HAM radio licenses like 10Watt and 30Watt and 100Watt. I notice you pronounce the name of the operating system "Nix O S" (as letters) and that is fine. I'm one of those people who says "OS" and in to rhyme with "loss" or "boss". This is partly because all the letters look stuck together as a word and some say MacOS (as if "Makosse") like that (Nixos as if "Nixosse"). It'd be interesting id the install process asked the end user to confirm how they say it whilst uploading voluntary telemetry so that a graph could be shown of how many people who have grabbed the distro say it as "O.S" instead of "Osse" _(and the same could be done upon initially grabbing the file from the site or upon update)._ It is a bit like the "Line Ux" versus "Lynn Ux" pronounciation. My comment has no hate in it and I do no harm. I am not appalled or afraid, boasting or envying or complaining... Just saying. Psalms23: Giving thanks and praise to the Lord and peace and love. Also, I'd say Matthew6.

[@Sabbelbacke]

Thanx for the amazing video. One thing I´d like to add: The ARC380 Encoders are of much better quality than previous iGPU Encoders (like the Kaby Lake 630 you mentioned) and even better than older Nvidia NVENC Encoders. AMD often is not even worth mentioning... Stuff like B-frame support was only added a few years ago in HW-Encoders. The dedicated Encoders in GPUs are mostly fast - but have gotten better in terms of encoding efficiency (meaning picture quality compared to bitrate, not power draw in this case) - and intel has included very good encoders.

[@nobodyshomeuk]

Could you redo/do some tests with transcoding AV1? It's a place where Arc uniquely shines in terms of price to performance that nothing else seems to come close.

[@gazzmilsom]

The reason behind the 8 pin connecter will likely be the use of that PCB for more than one GPU. The same thing happens with GTX 1650 vs 1650 supers that share a PCB design. The PCIe slot may give 75w but this is only accessible if the traces in the PCB actually wire it up, if the PCB is used for 75w plus GPUs then the power physically comes from the 8pin connector for the main power stages at least, so it still does on the sub 75w GPUs using that board. The same thing happens with extra 8 pins connectors VRM and VRAM spaces. The PCB is designed for the most powerful GPU that will be used, lesser models exclude unneeded components but are stuck with the physical traces.

[@Ilost11]

Thanks for the video, I had the same question when it came to arc A380 in a media server use case. I am at 13W idle on a RTX2060 with power tuning and an undervolt. The A380 is surprisingly efficient when not plugged into a monitor.

[@blipboop5594]

I appreciate the start of this video so much. Although this approach may lose you engagement in the short term, I'm certain it will earn you loyal and dedicated fans, the type who will actually support you on patron etc.

[@firenado4295]

the pcie slot does provide 75W however that's spread across 12v (66w) and 3.3v (9w) so you are capped at lower than 75w and that's why there's a power connector. Bit annoying since 10w lower wouldn't really affect processing power much I would have thought but oh well.

[@DrDingus]

I picked up an A380 for $60 used. It's a great deal for 4k 10bit transcoding. I actually have the same CPU you're using in my NAS as well.

[@Dawizard-c2w]

Just wanted to point out, regarding the 8 pin connector, that was ASRocks decision, there's a Sparkle model of the A380 that doesn't require a 8 pin, and I believe the ASRock Low Profile variant does not require it eitherl. Also interesting to note, the A310 could also be useful and as far as I know none of them have 8-pin power connectors. There's even a fully passively cooled A310 that has a max power of only 30 watts, though once again, that's for industrial applications and as such is prohibitively expensive.

[@pr0jectSkyneT]

I have an A380. Before I bought it, I looked around for the A310 but afaik it was only sold to very few countries like Russia and Kazakhstan.

[@akirafan28]

It looks like I am able to order it here in Norway with an unknown delivery date, for about the price of $715

[@Nightykk]

Had a 2200G server, in an AsRock A300, 4 SSDs, it idled at 14-16W. Currently using a 5750G, with a Crosshair VI Hero, 2x32GB of RAM, and some 9 SSDs, it idles at 29-31W - and with PBO limited to some ~60W, which it mostly stays under. Sure, does mean that I'm throttling it a bit on full-core loads, but, I rarely do those. No P/C-State messing about with, disabled RGB (obviously). Platinum PSU. Measured at wall with a wall measuring device. No graphics cards in either machine - except for the built-in. Though the C6H doesn't have a HDMI port - which is what got me interested in this (hopefully not clickbait) title. ;) It's entirely possible to get low idle draws, if such is your goal, and possibly if you don't mind messing about in the BIOS a bit.

[@LeminskiTankscor]

I love my little Intel N100 board. 8-9W idle! ~25W under load.

[@pokokjantan]

what board would that be bruv? curious to know!

[@weisstdudochnicht1]

If the N100 / N300 would support ECC RAM 😂😂😂

[@UrosR]

Any chance you could run the quicksync_calc as well?

[@LeminskiTankscor]

@@pokokjantan Asrock N100DC-ITX

[@pokokjantan]

@@LeminskiTankscor Thanks kindly bruv! much appreciated. :)

[@asineth832]

You should check out the Beelink S12 Pro (the one with the Intel N95/N100 CPU), they have a 6W TDP, use 12th gen E-cores, and have full Intel hardware transcoding. I've been using one to run my Jellyfin instance and all my other Docker containers for about 6 months now, and it consumes less than 10W.

[@jrizzo0413]

I also use a N100 Mini PC for my home/media server and can’t recommend it enough. Handles playback and several Docker containers like a champ.

[@zeendaniels5809]

My, my... Is the N100 that good? Because I was looking at a miniPC with N100 to run opnsense and some other services but I wasn't sure the N100 would cut it.

[@asineth832]

@@zeendaniels5809The N100 has 4 12th-gen Alder Lake E-cores which are about on par with older Skylake cores but at significantly lower power usage. It also has a modern Intel iGPU and things like AES-NI acceleration etc.

[@stephenxs8354]

@@zeendaniels5809 Depends on what you use it for and how fast your internet is. Its over hyped and overpriced. N97 is faster than the N100 actually. And any ryzen 5xxx+ series mini pc will blow it away for cheaper. It only has low power going for it. But how much difference would it make in reality. Very bad idea using mini pc for a 24/7 firewall anyway. Get a better cooled case ie "appliance case" one.

[@atranimecs]

If I wanted a small form factor, single-slot transcode machine, it would definitely be with an Nvidia Tesla P4 single-slot for how cheap they are ($75USD). Can transcode Two 4K Streams simultaneously in Plex without a hitch....of course this is assuming you have an iGPU to output video to monitor things.

[@joshhardin666]

I don't think that even newer intel cpu's igpus support av1 encoding, so i'm still stuck buying a dgpu for those needs and intel's arc cards are pretty fantastic for it. I'm surpprised you didn't share av1 encoding benchmarks here. av1 is usually just a bit more efficient than h.265 and is found on lots of hardware now (at least for decode) I've been loving av1 encoding on the 4090 in my workstation and i've been thinking about dropping an arc card in my server to offload it for those tasks too.

[@ChristianKoehler77]

The fact that CPU manufacturers take so much time integrating AV1 encoders is shocking. AMD Ryzen 7-7840 (which has a very powerful integrated GPU) does not support it. Latest and greatest Apple M3 Max does not support it, either. Don't say, it's not relevant. It is. Even video conferencing would benefit (better video at same bitrate). But I guess, nobody used video conferencing in recent years....?

[@joshhardin666]

@@ChristianKoehler77av1 has already been implemented on a few platforms (I know discord is already using it where available and I believe it's actively being worked on for zoom, webex, and others.

[@jaturnley]

Thanks, great video. I have had an A380 that I paid $55US and my old Ryzen 3900x CPU/Mobo sitting around for over a year waiting for Unraid to support it. I really wish someone would make an ITX i7-1280P/1370P board with a x8 PCIE slot for an HBA. It would make a great home server base, with plenty of power for just about anything you can throw at it at under 5W idle and max of 60W.

[@kevinhu196]

That's some impressive power consumption numbers, 10W idle and 15W with dGPU. My intel CPU system without any PCIe card draws 17W idle, I guess ITX mobo + arguably the best PSU for home server makes a difference.

[@azmc4940]

Thorough video. I bought this card because I have an AM4 board without video out, so I can't use a Ryzen APU and I also already have a 5800X. I'm no longer gaming and sold my gaming GPU, so I just needed a card for office use and video transcoding, and this one seemed to be a decent deal.

[@youtubetv-gf6xt]

The low profile A380 or A310 don't require external power and run directly off the PICe slot. UDH 630 is decent but not comparable to these cards anymore. I'm seeing people get 6 to 10 4k transcodes (with tone mapping) using the ARC cards with less than 50% CPU utilization. You need to move into the 12th gen UDH 730-770 to see those numbers. If you use Plex on a Windows machine you're better off upgrading to an ARC because you don't get tone mapping in hardware using the iGPU. Upgrading to a 7th gen UDH 630 from 6th gen is still an impressive improvement, it just has to fit your use case.

[@Sebyllis7350k]

TDP is for GPU only, so with the terrible VRM, fans and whatnot, the card would consume more than 75W at stock. You can run some benchmark and see the connector power draw from GPU-Z. Let alone the fact that the 75W figure is 12V and 3.3V combined, not 12V only, which would be 5.5A. Another thing to keep in mind is that modern motherboards typically have 3-4 PCIe slots, and if all of them are populated w/ GPUs drawing 66W @ 12V, the ATX power connector would literally melt, because it only has two +12V pins. Don't just say "this is stupid I could have made it so much better," because you can't. When you're trying to point out a problem, a little more in-depth research wouldn't hurt.

[@RetroBerner]

I run an A380 with my i5-13500 on my Plex server. I like that I can transcode video using deep link via handbrake while still having enough horsepower to use the server for other stuff.

[@stephenxs8354]

The iGpu in that processor would be just as good and not take away any of the cpu power...so not sure why you would do this. You can easily test and prove this yourself. Run same tasks with and without the A380 and note performance.

[@SuperDancingdonkey]

I got the low profile a310 exclusively for AV1 encoding. It really surprised me and I might get another for jellyfin.

[@EbonySaints]

Curious, I know that you got it for the encoder (I originally got my A380 to encode all my BDs to AV1, but then I got busy, lazy, and poor, so it's now my current GPU until better times come.) but how's the actual performance? Granted, I really don't expect much out of it on a good day, but you're literally the first person I've heard that's actually bought one, so any tidbits would be nice to hear.

[@victorcano7832]

Another good alternative, if AV1 is not important, is a quadro P400. Fairly low power at 30w tdp.

[@1xXNimrodXx1]

You can actually draw up to 90w from PCIE as there is no additional protection layer, which could cause your 24pin mobo power connector to melt.

[@gsridernet]

Have you seen the new ASRock N100M ? Alderlake 6w integrated cpu board...

[@kushagraN]

I hosted plex from my phone for a day and it worked fine without too high battery consumption. Will try something in 4k tomorrow.

[@CMDRSweeper]

You missed a group in your recommendations that this one would very much line up with. Those of us who can't upgrade and are stuck on WAY older platforms for our NASes and the like. We need the PCI-E lanes, and if you can't afford to fork out for AMD X399 or Intel X299, you are left with old platforms that could need a little encoding boost when consuming media. And why upgrading isn't possible, you have expansion cards like HBAs that use 8x PCI-E lanes, and on an Intel system like 6xxx and 7xxx, you are stuck with 16 PCI-E lanes in total. You quickly starve out on lanes and sort of need the old HEDP platforms to get somewhere.

[@linuxguy1199]

Running a NVIDIA Ada GPU in my Jellyfin setup, transcodes 4K H265 at well over 300FPS, but it uses about half a jigawatt while transcoding. Been considering downgrading to something a bit more power efficient.

[@bigcazza5260]

water mains are pressurised so when u open the tap its a relative vacuum hence the water will flow to the area of lesser pressure. if the mains pipe is leaking u may get a trickle or nothing at all at the tap

[@mikeh6286]

I noticed that Handbrake is super inefficient at transcoding. I thought it was my system that was too slow and I was using quick sync (hardware-ish transcoding). THEN I noticed that Plex was able to transcode without any problems. The picture quality is way better too. (h265 to h264). So, I'm just saying, look for efficient transcoding before running out and buying new hardware. I'm doing it with quality set to high (no hardware transcoding) 1080p on a Jasper Lake N5095 low power system without problems.

[@camjohnson2004]

Just a note about the Arc A380 and power requirements. You mentioned about using Molex to PCIe converter and sort of scoffed at that. Now on a card that draws more than 75 watt yes i totally agree with you, don't do it whatso ever. but since the A380 only draws 75 watt, and some of that WILL be delivered by the PCIe slot, even at the full 75 watt being pulled through the PCIe power connector, using the formula Amps = Wats divided by voltage, in this case, 75 divided by 12, that is a total of 6.25 Amps. Now your Typical 12v Molex wires are easily capable of 10 Amps on the 12v rail, so for that, well in spec, Again, if you have a GPU that draws more than say 90watts DO NOT use those converters, also, DO NOT use SATA to PCIe connectors, they can't handle the power

[@stephenxs8354]

If its for streaming only I think pairing the ARC GPU with a very low power cpu (once it supports BAR that is) is the best use case.

[@timothypierce4602]

This is very helpful to me, I was going to buy this exact GPU for jellyfin transcoding on my i5-9500 system Thanks a lot Wolfgang

[@jackipiegg]

12:13 Seems like you're confused as to why transcode exists in the first place. The main purpose of transcoding is to play videos on a weaker player OR saving bandwidth by capping bitrate/resolution. Mainly for mobile usage. What you did instead was to freaking convert 4k to 4k? Why not do a proper test of 4k>1080p OR 4k>720p. Facepalm.

[@WolfgangsChannel]

I did. Watch the video

[@Mister-Tea]

That intro remind me of the first LTT video, with Linus turning on his chair, kicking his desk... You do it with that German class and mechanic precision, I love it ! XD

[@ValdeSanus]

Idle power is lower if you do not plug a display into the card. You can pass through dedicated graphics and plug into the iGPU port on the motherboard with some performance hit.

[@WolfgangsChannel]

This is with no display plugged in

[@frederichardy8844]

There's a HP A380 (M99310-001) without power connector (for prebuilt HP ) I found one on eBay. It' in "HP Victus 15L i5 w/ Arc A380", and HP 49N24AV

[@aliaghil1]

What a great video!! I use Xeon E3-1245 v6 CPU with HD graphics P630, and I am thrilled with the transcoding results.

[@stephenxs8354]

What mobo?

[@aliaghil1]

@@stephenxs8354 It is hard to say what model mobo it is. It is one of the Dell pre-built workstations I got on eBay a few years back.

[@Dechrissen]

I have to say your meme clip/image insertion is very tasteful and not annoying. They always make me chuckle.

[@macskaichardware]

love how detailed this video is, thanks for making it

[@tonyjohansson8395]

I did a lot of research when building my media server/private cloud/occasional game server. Ended up with the i5 11600K as the iGPU would be plenty to do transcoding.

[@ChristianKoehler77]

When you are live streaming (sending, not watching) a card like that is very useful. AV1 has much better video quality at the same bitrate when compared to h.264. Currently no igpu can encode that format and software encoding usually is too slow for realtime. H.265 is usually not an option because of the crazy patent situation. What to do if you are not happy with the picture quality? It may be very expensive or even impossible to get an internet connection with faster upstream. But it's easy to plug in an ARC and get better video using AV1.

[@LucasJed]

I've been running an ARC card for months and I'm very pleased. Running a modern kernel on OpenSUSE with dockerized media servers

[@Richard-rk1ru]

Both my server and my main PC need a serious overhaul, I was close to upgrading both seperately but now I will probably use my old ryzen 2600x in the server with an arc once I upgrade my main. This was really helpful, thanks.

[@Pro_DRIFTZ]

i bought this gpu for jellyfin but i dont get anywhere near that performance i get about 27fps instead of your performance at 12:10

[@austinskylines]

Awesome explanation about intel and their Igpu! literally that person who uses their old system for the homeNAS

[@arkham_knight]

ASRock Arc A380 Low Profile DOESN'T have 8-pin power connector btw. Also I think you can just don't plug Challenger one, underclock it to 2000 MHz and run perfectly fine without additional power.

[@UTJK.]

Hi Wolfgang... what's the model of the energy monitor (or can you supply the link from where you bought yours, if online)? Thanks

[@Scrumplex]

Can't wait for the inevitable NixOS content :D

[@the_spicy_orange]

The ARC card likely handles multiple transcodes better than the igpu considering it has 6gb of VRAM, compared to a portion of system memory.

[@kageofkonoha]

Good video. Now run power tests after undervolting the arc? Also from what I have seen it can be 1W with monitor off. But have only seen that in windows.

[@WolfgangsChannel]

This is with no monitor plugged in

[@FrenziedManbeast]

Thanks for the video! This really demonstrates another reason ITX builds are terrible for HomeLab/Server to me: higher component cost, castrated PCIe connectivity and I/O, and generally more cumbersome to work on. For the cost of stepping up to mATX or even ATX you gain so, so much flexibility I wouldn't consider ITX for anything other than a fancy router, and only with a hand-me-down or decommissioned set of used hardware.

[@realDesertLad]

I bought an A380 for my Plex server and it struggles a bit with 4K with my 8700K, but other than that I've been pretty happy with it. I can't wait for Plex to FINALLY support AV1

[@dbod4866]

But does it work in Plex

[@FirstName-zt2my]

Stremio+Torrentio+Debrid is 100x better tbh.

[@cloudgeeker7639]

I have an a uhd770 based on 13900 and I put it into jellyfin,it runs normally but 4k h265 hdr vedio transcoding especially with high bandwidth will be slow to play, for example when I jump to somewhere it will delay for about 5-6 secs to handel before to play and it's a little uninfluence as I thought,now I use an NVIDIA p4 for this staff of work and it goes much better❤

[@macualey]

Is there a transcoding benchmark database for iGPUs? I don't know how else I could compare H265 transcoding between p530 vs p630 vs UHD710 vs the a310.

[@Jasontyo]

If one has a windows plex server with a QuickSync capable intel CPU would adding an Arc GPU give me aditional performance via Deep Link?

[@jh-12358]

My 3900x based do everything server is glad ARC cards are finally proving to be useful for this.

[@JuanFmTech]

Do a video about CapRover is a really cool selfhosting docker manager

[@deckardstp]

Did you already put the transcoding folder in a RAM disk? This can also improve the performance and decrease the wear of the ssd.

[@PunsRDum]

0:03 perfect now on to other videos...

[@kelownatechkid]

For a point of comparison, my gtx 1660 uses about 17W when transcoding and around 8W idle so that is pretty good power consumption for sure.

[@methanoid]

You need to do a video on power saving on an install using those scripts and BIOS settings... Many people would benefit from it.

[@heickelrrx]

I run my media server with R5 1600, I was considering arc but never understand how to tune the power it on TrueNAS Instead I found cheap used Quadro P400, I settle with that

[@pr0jectSkyneT]

Ive been using the ASRock Challenger A380 for my Proxmox server for 6 months now. I didnt know you could activate ASPM for it in a Linux system. I will try out the script you provided and see if i can bring the idle power down. I'll also try activating ASPM for my LSI HBA (Dell H310). Hopefully that bring power down wothout affecting my TrueNAS VM performance. Were you only able to do hardware transcoding only by passing through the entire GPU to the VM or can you do it wothout dedicated passthrough?

[@mysterychemical]

Elgato HD60 Pro uses around 2W while transcoding 1080p 60fps 10Mbps using inbuilt hardware encoder.

[@borzinmehr300]

Nice autumnal colours btw ;) 🍂

[@knightsun2920]

They are trying to do away with drawing power from PCI-E slot. One old Intel manufactured motherboard i have refuses to detect a card that only draws power from external power.

[@wilsondavenport6939]

There is a variant of the a380 the sparkle A380 and it doesn’t have an external power connection I haven’t seen a comparison of the performance but I would assume it should still do the transcoding

[@WillFuI]

I think the R card is the best transcoding card out there. I don’t know what is streaming to KZbin and Twitch using h264 and AV1 and recording and it’s 265. And the card pulls like 26w. I have the lower profile a380 and it uses 17w using av1 and h264. The lower profile one doesn’t use a pcie power

[@jupiterbjy]

5:46 God I envy that! My server with 3 7200RPM drives, 2 2.5" ssd with ASRock J4105M pulls 33W on wall meter! HDD never idles no matter what - guess that's what I get from cheap aliexpress sata cards, rip my ec bills

[@motmontheinternet]

Most modern HDDs don't actually support spindown, they'll keep spinning no matter the settings. The reason for this is that they usually only draw about an extra watt when at minimum rotation.

[@WolfgangsChannel]

@motmontheinternet I don't think that's true. I've got Exos X18 drives in my server, and they do support spindown. Ditto for my WD Red Pros, Seagate Barracudas and WD White Label 6TB drives.

[@luiserasmo]

01:40 Engineering , water and public services?, I thought that was about @PracticalEngineeringChannel

[@aSpartan111]

Hello all, What is the SFF PC shown at 8:14 ? I couldn't find it in Wolf's C. videos... It seems to be an interesting one especially with a PCIe port.

[@WolfgangsChannel]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/j6Kcf6eKiJ5jd6csi=zwrP88-udvhwV33b

[@aSpartan111]

@@WolfgangsChannel Wúnderbar ! Thank a lot for your fast reply ! I also spotted the same Mobo (ga-imb1900tn) into the "Building a Power Efficient Home Server!" video (6:25).

[@CSGORANK2SpOOKY]

You left out a mayor part of what the arc cards can do in transcoding complete library's from avc to hevc and av1 you get to the highest data retention while hw accl compression of all and its at speeds up to 4 times faster then the newest intel igpu with 2 encoders enabled. Itsss way better then the streaming you showed. Consider a second part on it, because its in a 10%ish range of the rtx 4090 which just cobbels way more power doing that transcoding. And costs 10x more. 😢 its brutal shows so little of what this card can do in transcoding.

[@nephron9924]

A380 only has 1 encoder tho. . Unless you mean using the intel igpu?

[@CSGORANK2SpOOKY]

@@nephron9924 i made a slide error true but its not that its that there are 2 MFX with 2 Encoders each. Aka 4 Encoders in Total. Look at the pictures.

[@SilkMilkJilk]

finally someone who knows what he is doing, ty and sub

[@timmy7201]

I host my Plex server in a Proxmox VM, having 6 out of 16 threads assigned on an R7 2700... No trans-coding is done when I'm watching locally, it's however often required when I'm watching remotely using VPN. I've noticed zero issues trans-coding 4K to 1080p, during the past 5 years or so...

[@Reflexiony]

Does it actually make a difference in terms of Jellyfin HW transcoding whether AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 5650G or AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 4750G and has anything positive happened in terms of frame rate? As we in DE have all noticed, the low price of Gigabyte motherboard MC12-LE0 Re1.0 AMD B550 I got two with your GEIL cooler each, which is not loud even for 2U, for a very fair 100€ from one of the well-known stores. Now I'm thinking about replacing my two mainboards C246 WSI (one with i3 8100 and one i3-9350k) with this one, the nice thing is that with the F14 BIOS my p400/Aspeed/APU is also passed through, depending on what you like. Plus iKVM and ECC support. Another alternative would be to take the offers and go for Ryzen 5600 and use an Intel A310/380 instead, you can get both together for about 200€ depending on the offer, has the advantage of also integrating 4xNVMe via a slot and AV1 for the future. I can see that I need to take things apart and test them.

[@michaelsoutherland3023]

I have that very card driving 4K HDR10 and FHD 8-bit with both at 60Hrz, it stays around 17W. Note: I blame it on the ATI all in wonder from 25 years ago, a computer doesn't seem right without a graphics card.

[@FelsvonDrago]

First class! Thank you! Great preparation of the content, excellent derivation and explanation, good presentation of the results! Finally a clear and understandable guide and recommendation! Thank you from Germany!

[@igordasunddas3377]

You should call yourself "TheEfficencyGuy", because your focus in power consumption is unique and I love it (fellow German here, too, btw.). Great job on the videos.

[@genocidestomper]

Damn, I was hoping for AV1 encoding benchmarks

[@greatwavefan397]

Yeah me too 😔

[@r3drumg33k3]

Am4 pro cpus do not have "full" ecc support, although on some motherboards it will run and perform "ecc" but it isnt the same.

[@WolfgangsChannel]

Most motherboards apart from a handful of models will support and take advantage of ECC - www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1045186/ Even cheaper A-series chipsets. AMD doesn't guarantee ECC support and it's pretty hard to find info on which motherboards do or don't support it, but it's still better than Intel, where you would need a C or W-series chipset. I use the word "full" since some other platforms will be able to run ECC UDIMM memory, but won't be able to use the ECC functionality. So unless you specify that AM4 will also actually *use* ECC, this gets confusing very quickly

[@darthkielbasa]

Your video dropped just in time. I’ve been considering an Intel GPU for Jellyfin.

[@shanent5793]

How does the ARC card support ECC? It doesn't have extra chips so it must be in-band, does that have any effect on performance?

[@allogic]

Where can I buy that polo?

[@TerenceKearns]

Nice review. I was looking for a review on the Arc Pro 640 but I learned a lot from watching this one too.

[@sourcilavise3788]

I'm currently in this hell trying to have the most power efficient NAS... I have a 7100 coupled with a D3417-B21 and maybe I will upgrade it when newer (maybe for meteor lake) igpu will be able to encode av1 (I like to play with ffmpeg, kdenlive and video2x container). My system still pulls 8-9W idle but maybe with the tuning script, I can get to 6-7W range which would be the best the german forum gets with either a RM550x PSU or a LC-420 PSU. maybe when intel A40 price drops, we will be able to get a nice GPU which can get to C8 or C10.