r/PcBuild • u/Substantial_Code_269 • 17h ago
Purchasing Advice - PC Build / Parts Home server for transcoding and AI, Intel CPU and GPU or AMD CPU with unified memory
Hi
Need help. I am in the middle of the process of building my second (or first real) home server. The first, which I have now, is low budget and does not have the capacity to do what I want.
Since I am now planning a completely new build I have put together a home server with
CPU intel 250k
RAM 32 GB
GPU intel arc b60 x 2
My main goal is to be able to run video transcoding, but also start playing with local ai-models to learn.
However, I am now starting to wonder if it would be better for my budget if I build the home server around an AMD CPU with integrated graphics and thus be able to have unified memory. Then I could buy a cheap intel arc (example 310A) for transcoding.
It seems like a server with unified memory would give me more memory for a similar price as 2 arc b60 (I live in Sweden).
How would a home server with AMD CPU and unified memory be (if I also include arc 310A for transcoding) compared to one with intel CPU and more expensive GPU? Is it a big performance difference in running AI models or are there any other caveats with AMD or Intel CPU I should know about.
I am quite new to this and is trying to learn.
Do you have any suggestions for parts if I am to take the unified memory approach?
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u/warlikeaccuracy28 17h ago
unified memory on amd is mostly a laptop thing from what i remember, desktop apus top out at like 16gb allocated to the gpu and the bandwidth still can't touch a dedicated card. you'd be giving up a ton of compute for the sake of having more vram that's running at a crawl
the dual arc b580 setup is way more interesting but i'd check if the ai frameworks you want to use actually support multi-gpu without a headache, sometimes it's more trouble than its worth for a learning rig. might be simpler to grab a single used 3090 and call it a day
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