I have only a PCIe 2.0 x4 and a PCIe 3.0 x16 free and I need to install a 10Gbps SFP+ card and a graphic card for transcoding with Jellyfin (the CPU is an old E5-2620 v2). Since I can’t find any SFP+ card that is x4, do you know a graphic card with decent transcoding capabilities (I’d day 2 4K simultaneously) that is only PCIe 2.0 x4?
Edit: the x4 slot is full length.
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The absolute best bang for your buck new GPU’s for decode/encode are Intel ARC GPU’s. They use Intel’s Quick Sync Video system which is some of the best supported encode/decode libraries out there, and they’re cheap.
An ARC A380 is easily had for $110, runs entirely off 75w PCIe slot power requiring no additional PSU wires, and supports H264/H265/AV1 encode. It’s a no brainer.
As long as it physically fits the slot, it should not have an issue with the lower PCIe bandwidth. The lower end GPU’s really need very little even for video encode.
Is the x4 slot full length? Because the graphics card will likely work fine in an x4 slot. Especially if you are just using it for transcoding. PCI Express is backwards compatible, is just going to limit performance.
PCIe 2.0 with 4 lanes gets you 2GB/s. Which should be more than enough for video transcoding.
If it’s not a full length slot you can buy a riser that converts it. Some x4 slots have a cutout at the end though to allow them to accept full length cards.
I was thinking this too, if you have an open-ended 4x slot it can fit a 16x card but only runs at 4x.
TBH if you’re running 10Gb you may want to look for a board with on-board 10Gb rather than a PCIE which will save you the slot. My HP server has a swapable daughter board for the nic so you can chose 4x1Gb or 4x10Gb.
I already have the server, it doesn’t make any sense to change it. Above all, as someone else has pointed, the 4 lanes are enough for transcoding.
Yes, it’s full lenngth. Thanks!
Re-reading your post, I just realized you’re probably trying to put a video card in the second PCI-E slot and you need to make sure your board will support that. Some boards will not boot if the only video device is not in the primary slot. If you have onboard video from the CPU this won’t be an issue. But definitely double check the manual for your motherboard.
PCIe is back- and forwards-compatible, so even an RTX 4090 would in theory work in a PCIe 2.0 x4 slot.
Now, PCIe 2.0 x4 is obviously really slow compared to what most current cards support (PCIe 4.0 x16), but I doubt transcoding is bandwidth sensitive on the PCIe link.
So pick pretty much any card, be wary though that some consumer-focused cards artificially limit the amount of concurrent transcoding sessions they support. Seems like Nvidia is limiting consumer cards to now 8 sessions, which is probably plenty.
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