Warm? Hot? [O]uch? G3258/PC Mate MC Deal

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PGHammer

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Depending on local store stock, the G3258/MSI Z97 PC Mate motherboard bundle is back at MicroCenter - the price has actually gone down, though (the CPU dropped $10USD to $49.99 - the motherboard is still $40USD in the bundle).

That means that the bundle is once again cheaper than the motherboard alone - by a not-small $10USD.
 
So... No links, no total price, and three question marks in the title?

3/10
 
I bought this combo last year when it was $100. It is a very snappy system and I am very satisfied with it. It's used as a secondary computer to play WoW. Highly recommend it for normal usage.

Also that motherboard has like 5 fan plugs on it, was very surprised.
 
Got the same combo, OC'ed to 4.3ghz no prob. Mobo does not have SLI, but does support Crossfire.
 
How would this motherboard and CPU combo be for building a PLEX server? The CPU is only a dual core and I'm wondering if that's enough to transcode video.
 
DiscreteMeat said:
How would this motherboard and CPU combo be for building a PLEX server? The CPU is only a dual core and I'm wondering if that's enough to transcode video.
Click to expand...

My e8400 works fairly decently. Bit of a stutter at times if it's a 1080p MKV movie with audio that also needs transcoded, but nothing too horrible. Can take 30 sec to 1min at the very beginning as it buffers somewhat as well.
 
Here's a better benchmark test comparing the two chips

Intel Pentium G3258 vs Core2 Duo E8400

A bit of a concern though is what is states in the conclusion about multimedia:

The G3258's Achilles heel is its poor multi-core performance which is over 50% weaker than the group leaders.
For the vast majority of users, assuming an overclock of 4.3 GHz, the G3258 is the best value processor on the market by miles.
On the other hand, users that encode multi-media or run SLI/Crossfire setups should look elsewhere.



Unless I'm missing something this seems to suggest that perhaps this CPU would NOT be a good chip for a PLEX server?


.
 
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Not for nothing but I was thinking real hard about buying the G3258 today from MC when I saw it was down to $49.99. I have been holding out for Skylake-S because I want a Plex server to be running all the time and I want a cheap chip that can do the job transcoding 2 or more streams at a time without using a lot of power. The G3258 fits the bill for cheap a powerful enough for possible 3 streams transcoded simultaneously but the TDP is still 53W.

So I'm trying to balance what 53W TDP is going to be real world when it's sitting idle vs. the 35W TDP of Skylake-S. I'm hoping there will be a budget Skylake around $50 at MC because the Skylake are suppose to be the cheaper part and the Broadwell being released at the same time are suppose to be the faster part. Then I come across a critical piece of information that tips me over the edge to waiting for Skylake-S. Skylake-S is going to support hardware H.265/HEVC encoding and decoding. Weather or not Plex will support it on this chip is another story but they added it in version 14 of Kodi. I may as well have a box run as my htpc with a Plex server running in the background.

With 4k video on the horizon I really feel like I'm going to have to encode that with 10bit. Not because I'm worried about file size taking up too much room on my NAS. Because I'm worried about the amount of stress streaming such large files will put on my network. Nobody wants video playing on their own network to buffer in the middle of a movie.
 
Basically, it's just an additional $10 off the deal that they've kept going on for months (this deal is probably to clear out space for broadwell). I've built several systems with this combination, no complaints from anyone yet. It's only a dual core, not quad. It doesn't hyperthread. Compared to my 3770, it takes forever to transcode. But it overclocks well, so if your game doesn't need multicores and hyperthreading, it should be just fine, and you can put the extra cash into a better video card. I've been putting them into Lian Li PC 6077 cases that were on ebay for $39.
 
At $10 more this was still a great deal. I ended up dropping the CPU in my mITX box and sold the motherboard for a modest profit. If you're not expecting the world, these Pentiums are solid.
 
Would this be any sort of upgrade from an AMD Phenom II X2 (unlocked 2 cores, so I guess its an X4? Haven't kept up with AMD's naming scheme)
 
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