Best Intel CPU for 4k HEVC 10bits videos?

1st Official Post

    Hi here!

    I currently have a HTPC with Core i3 2120T on board. This one did a great work for years but is literally dying with a 4k HEVC 10bits video.

    Time to upgrade. I tried with the Nvidia GT 1030 to keep the same motherboard, but this was not working at all. And next, I saw that the card does not support 10bits video.

    Card returned. If only I saw your post earlier Klojum...

    Well, I know have to buy a new Intel CPU and the corresponding motherboard.

    I read that Kaby Lake CPU familly does support 4k HEVC 10bits videos quite well, but I would like to know which one is the best bet.

    Here is my basic requirements:

    • Intel CPU trend. Did I already say it? ;)
    • Compatible with the last stable version of LibreELEC (You don't say?!).
    • Be from the last Kaby Lake familly.
    • Can display at least 4K WHXGA (5 120 × 3 200) resolution over HDMI and DVI. I currently have a 1080p TV monitor which does not support HDMI signal correctly (I have to set audio force-dvi trough xrandr to have a clean image). But I want to be hardware ready for the next TV.
    • Low power consumption (T series). I only have a 150W power supply and I can't change it.
    • Can read fluently at least the jellyfish-140-mbps-4k-uhd-hevc-10bit.mkv video. According to the website, this is the minimum to read UHD 4k videos.
    • Can read fluently yuv420p10le pixel format. This is the most used format of all my 4K videos. I will give you some NFO extract below.

    Here is my bonus requirements (if the price worth it) :

    Here is some NFO extract of video I want to play:

    What are your advises about this? I'm used to i3 but I'm saw some CPU like Intel Pentium G4600 can do the work. Is that enough? Even for bonuses?

    If you have some test videos you saw are you made, you are also welcomed to share! :)

    BTW, if you have some mini-ITX motherboard supporting Kaby Lake processors to recommend, I'm hearing. ;)

    Many thanks for reading.

    Edited 3 times, last by Soullivaneuh (July 15, 2017 at 11:11 AM).

    • Official Post

    'Better'... at what? Videos won't be played faster, and the basics for a video play are roughly all the same. Some have a little faster gpu, some have more gpu cores. Also, the next generation like Coffee Lake is rumored to be introduced much earlier, perhaps even in 2-3 months time. Currently Intel has no 'real' HDMI 2.0 port. Some NUCs are using a DisplayPort derivative. The next gen boxes should have a proper HDMI 2.0x port.

    Quote from Klojum

    How many 400Mbps videos are there nowadays? :)

    Maybe none today, but maybe later. I don't want to have to change all my computer again two year after the upgrade. :)

    Quote from lrusak

    I have a NUC7i5BNK that I use for development. It is what I do all my VAAPI testing on. It's a great machine although NUC's are expensive.

    Thanks for the answer! I'm not looking for a NUC, but I will look at the hardware.

    • Official Post
    Quote from Soullivaneuh

    I don't want to have to change all my computer again two year after the upgrade.

    This depends what you need, non of this systems could play AV1 media at higher resolutions.

    AV1 is the successor of of HEVC and gets heavily pushed by those small companies like Google, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft ... you name it and it is highly likely that they rather quick switch to AV1 because there are zero licence fees. First content should be available in ~1-2 years.

    So if you buy today you have already have an counter at your hardware :) So better buy rather cheap what fits your needs today !

    Current price to performance kings are these various S905 boxes, for Intel there is only J3455 or J4205 because only these HW has HDMI 2.0.

    For the best CPU from Intel (performance/price wise) the G4560 are no HDMI 2.0 supporting mainboards available that are not extreme expensive (cheapest is 160€ - more then an complete NUC/Brix/ZBox).

    My 4 years (!) old haswell NUC D54250WYK2 cost me 309 euro without disk/ram and it's still running beautifully. It does HD audio and it's even powerful enough to run "Mario Kart Double Dash" smoothly in Dolphin.

    It's still my main HTPC and although the NUC7i5BNK is tempting I believe it doesn't do HD audio and it's not real HDMI 2.0 which leads to other issues. The next gen NUC's are just around the corner (or so I hear) and they will have real HDMI 2.0 and a bump in graphics power.

    That said, every NUC I had did have minor issues that were solved in the Linux kernel and/or firmware as time went by.