8 Core/16 Thread, boosting up to 5.1GHz with iGPU would be pretty neat for a Plex Server or Proxmox Server with a few VMs.
I've put it in quotes as the effort required from these chips for streaming transcoding is so low these days that brute force makes it sound like more effort than it really is.
What's your source for this? Transcoding without acceleration is incredibly expensive, especially for 4K content, and especially for 4K HDR content.
Even a single 4K HDR -> 1080p transcode takes a huge amount of resources.
The Asustor Lockerstor4 Gen3 has a Quad-Core Ryzen Embedded V3C14 and cannot transcode 4K content.
Meanwhile, an old Kaby Lake Intel chip does so just fine but only because its QSV can handle h265.
Quick Sync is invaluable for low powered processors, my old Intel embedded Wyze can do several streams.
Even on modern chips, transcoding is quite expensive.
People who are running Plex generally are running on servers also serving files, web apps, and who knows what else. These devices are often running 24/7, so both overall cost and power efficiency are big concerns. I wouldn't want to rely on my server being at high CPU usage most of the time - for power, heat, and overall reliability concerns.
I asked the following in my original question because I have literally the same concerns, and I've found transcoding support with AMD to be a bit flakey with these media server apps.
> Is it actually using the iGPU, or just "brute forcing" it?
My homelab setup runs out of memory much faster than it does CPU cores.