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Of course you can add a GPU card on the PCIe slot, but this 1) takes away a slot, and PCIe lanes, that you might want to use for connecting storage devices (suc

Of course you can add a GPU card on the PCIe slot, but this 1) takes away a slot, and PCIe lanes, that you might want to use for connecting storage devices (such as a SATA HBA card), and 2) this will probably poorly affect your system's overall power consumption, which is a big factor for home users building NAS/media server boxes. Intel's QuickSync performs extremely well, with very low power (esp at idle) for 4k transcoding, for very low cost, while not needing any PCIe lanes; it's why these CPUs are so popular for this application. Unfortunately, Intel stupidly refuses to allow ECC support on non-Xeon chips, so that's a big drawback, as ECC is really useful for a storage server (or really anywhere).

justinclift 2y ago
> Intel stupidly refuses to allow ECC support on non-Xeon chips They at least used to support ECC on some models of i3 chips as well. My understanding was that was specifically to support ECC on lower power NAS systems. Random examples: • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/90729/intel-core-i3-6100-processor-3m-cache-3-70-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/90729/i... (6th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/97455/intel-core-i3-7100-processor-3m-cache-3-90-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/97455/i... (7th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/129944/intel-core-i3-8100t-processor-6m-cache-3-10-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/129944/... (8th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/190886/intel-core-i3-9100f-processor-6m-cache-up-to-4-20-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/190886/... (9th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/203899/intel-core-i3-10100te-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-60-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/203899/... (10th gen i3) Looking over random i3 pages from 11th gen onwards though, I'm not even seeing ECC mentioned on the pages at all. It's not a "yes/no" item like on the older generation ones pages, it's completely absent (from the ones I just checked). :(
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  It looks like these CPUs were specifically targeted at embedded devices; they aren't things you can normally purchase yourself easily like the regular desktop chips, and if you look at the desktop variants (the ones without any letter suffixes), they don't support ECC. You can still see it even in 13th generation CPUs: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/232105/intel-core-i3-13100te-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-10-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/232105/... But as you can see here, this is an embedded variant; you're not going to find it at Amazon, as it's probably only sold directly to manufacturers.
  - hsjdhdvsk 2y ago
    I own one if these i3s from 6th gen. Bought at retail. Nothing special.
  - justinclift 2y ago
    > they aren't things you can normally purchase yourself easily like the regular desktop chips That's not really relevant to the point of them only allowing ECC on Xeon chips though. They do (or at least did) support ECC on non-Xeon chips. These days though, people are probably better off buying an appropriate Ryzen processor and motherboard that explicitly supports ECC. That's what I did anyway. :)
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      >These days though, people are probably better off buying an appropriate Ryzen processor and motherboard that explicitly supports ECC. As I pointed out before, you can't do that for a media server. Transcoding is necessary for many (most?) users. >That's not really relevant to the point of them only allowing ECC on Xeon chips though. They do (or at least did) support ECC on non-Xeon chips. That's a distinction without a difference: those other non-Xeon chips aren't useful if you can't even buy them because you're not an OEM.
      - justinclift 2y ago
        They look pretty easily available to me, or are you going to exclude Ebay now as well? https://www.ebay.com/itm/305342386279 https://www.ebay.com/itm/305342386279 (note: I don't know the seller)

justinclift 2y ago

> Intel stupidly refuses to allow ECC support on non-Xeon chips They at least used to support ECC on some models of i3 chips as well. My understanding was that was specifically to support ECC on lower power NAS systems. Random examples: • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/90729/intel-core-i3-6100-processor-3m-cache-3-70-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/90729/i... (6th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/97455/intel-core-i3-7100-processor-3m-cache-3-90-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/97455/i... (7th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/129944/intel-core-i3-8100t-processor-6m-cache-3-10-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/129944/... (8th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/190886/intel-core-i3-9100f-processor-6m-cache-up-to-4-20-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/190886/... (9th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/203899/intel-core-i3-10100te-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-60-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/203899/... (10th gen i3) Looking over random i3 pages from 11th gen onwards though, I'm not even seeing ECC mentioned on the pages at all. It's not a "yes/no" item like on the older generation ones pages, it's completely absent (from the ones I just checked). :(

shiroiushi 2y ago
It looks like these CPUs were specifically targeted at embedded devices; they aren't things you can normally purchase yourself easily like the regular desktop chips, and if you look at the desktop variants (the ones without any letter suffixes), they don't support ECC. You can still see it even in 13th generation CPUs: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/232105/intel-core-i3-13100te-processor-12m-cache-up-to-4-10-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/232105/... But as you can see here, this is an embedded variant; you're not going to find it at Amazon, as it's probably only sold directly to manufacturers.
- hsjdhdvsk 2y ago
  I own one if these i3s from 6th gen. Bought at retail. Nothing special.
- justinclift 2y ago
  > they aren't things you can normally purchase yourself easily like the regular desktop chips That's not really relevant to the point of them only allowing ECC on Xeon chips though. They do (or at least did) support ECC on non-Xeon chips. These days though, people are probably better off buying an appropriate Ryzen processor and motherboard that explicitly supports ECC. That's what I did anyway. :)
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >These days though, people are probably better off buying an appropriate Ryzen processor and motherboard that explicitly supports ECC. As I pointed out before, you can't do that for a media server. Transcoding is necessary for many (most?) users. >That's not really relevant to the point of them only allowing ECC on Xeon chips though. They do (or at least did) support ECC on non-Xeon chips. That's a distinction without a difference: those other non-Xeon chips aren't useful if you can't even buy them because you're not an OEM.
    - justinclift 2y ago
      They look pretty easily available to me, or are you going to exclude Ebay now as well? https://www.ebay.com/itm/305342386279 https://www.ebay.com/itm/305342386279 (note: I don't know the seller)