Celeron, Pentium, Atom for In-home streaming client?

[niikto]

I was thinking of building a DLNA/iTunes server with an external hard drive and thought I'd add Steam in-home streaming as a function to use with my gaming desktop PC as server. I already have an extra SSD and some laptop DDR3, so I could get one of those barebones NUC type boxes or maybe a compute stick, but I was wondering what CPU-based system should I get, Celeron, Pentium or Atom. I think the i3 based systems would put me over budget for what I want to do (<$150.)

[mymuesli HONIGNUSS]

From the pure Steam Streaming point-of-view, any CPU with a GPU capable of hardware h264/h265 decoding would be sufficient. The feature you are looking for is called Intel QuickSync. E.g. the Skylake CPUs Intel Celeron G3900 or Intel Pentium G4400 both including the same GPU Intel HD 510 should be able to decode the Steam Stream.

Just an idea, if you set up a raspberry pi as your DLNA Server, i cant say anything about iTunes, and buy a Steam Link, you might be able to stay below $100. And you would be able to have a pretty power efficient DLNA server running 24/7 and the steam link only if required.

[kreiselhoschi]

Originally posted by darkpavian:

Just an idea, if you set up a raspberry pi as your DLNA Server, i cant say anything about iTunes, and buy a Steam Link, you might be able to stay below $100. And you would be able to have a pretty power efficient DLNA server running 24/7 and the steam link only if required.

Another approach would be investing the $150 in Nvidia Shield Android TV... if you own an Nvidia GPU (Kepler or newer!), you could stream from your gaming rig to the shield, too, and you could also use it as DLNA server. It only needs a couple of watts but has lots of power.

[Dav]

I built a mini-PC dedicated to streaming which uses a Celeron G1840. It works great and has no problem decoding 1080p 60fps.

[niikto]

I just wanted to update that I bought a Gigabyte Brix SFF barebones based on the Celeron J1900, which I think is an Atom quad-core, and it works well. My first Brix was DOA so I RMA'd but the new one is running. I used an old OCZ Agility 3 128GB SSD and 8GB DDR3L-1600 SO-DIMM. I bought a Windows 7 Pro COA, installed Win 7 Pro and upgraded to Windows 10.

Streaming from my desktop (i5-2500K Sandy Bridge, AMD 7970 Ghz, 16GB RAM) works well at 1080P60. At first, I had problems with ~1Hz flicker, but I disabled AMD hardware encoding in Steam server options. I enabled the iGPU on the CPU for intel Quicksync by roughly following a guide:

https://mirillis.com/en/products/tutorials/action-tutorial-intel-quick-sync-setup_for_desktops.html

Now, it's flicker free.

The network is through a 100 Mbps Verizon FIOS router. My test setup was directly to the router. But our living room is far and in a WiFi dead zone, so I already had a MOCA adapter (since Verizon FIOS already MOCA bridges an Internet connection for the router - street connection). The performance is just as good.

itunes/DLNA serving also works, of course and regular video plays well in Kodi.