Forumite Members › General Topics › Tech › PC Talk › 4k small PC for streaming to
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Ed P.
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December 21, 2019 at 7:49 pm #39062
Anonymous
Forumite Points: 0Hi all,
Hoping I can get some advice on my next purchase. In my living room I have my Ryzen machine. This is great for playing games on the TV and playing VR with the Oculus. But coming to do serious work or gaming where I need a mouse and keyboard is all a bit rubbish on a sofa.
What I’d like to be able to do is remote into the machine and run the games etc through that. The screen I have upstairs is a 4k model, but only via Displayport can it do 4k@60Hz, not hdmi which is limited to 30Hz.
Initially I’ve attempted with a Raspberry Pi, which while it can play games, it is limited to 1080p, as 4k is too much for it, even just the desktop. I did buy an Nvidia shield, but am sending that back as it’s not working, doesn’t have displayport out either.
I have borrowed an UpSquared from work to try it out. It’s listed as a Celeron N3350 @1.1Ghz dual core, 2Gb shared memory (looks like GPU is taking 256Mb) and the graphics is Intel 500 (Broxton 2×6).
This is able to run the desktop at 4k, but it’s extremely sluggish at having much open, even a couple of tabs of chrome really kills it.
So what’s something I could use as a low power machine to receive a 4k stream over the network?
December 21, 2019 at 9:37 pm #39065What model Pi have you used? The Pi 4 can display two 4K monitors apparently (not tried it, as no 4K monitors here).
"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett
December 21, 2019 at 9:47 pm #39066Forumite Points: 0It is the Pi 4 4Gb. While the Pi can do 4k on one screen (I’ve never tried 2), it’s really like treacle. It’s definitely useful for static displays/advertising boards, but for using as a day to day desktop, it just doesn’t have the power. Plus for me, I can’t use HDMI in at 4k 60.
December 21, 2019 at 10:40 pm #39069I have posted the above link because I am not sure your problem is to do with the computer you are using to display the 4K screen. It shouldn’t take that much processing power to just display an uncompressed 4K video stream.
December 22, 2019 at 7:42 pm #39082I agree in theory streaming 4K should take up about 25mbps, you would hope your WiFi was up to that.
What about turning this on it’s head and leaving the Ryzen where it is and having the low powered box in the “office area” instead and remote to the Ryzen via RDP or VNC? I do this literally all the time. Once a new PC in the workshop has it’s o/s installed the next thing that goes on is TightVNC and the rest of the setup and testing takes place via my laptop from the sofa 😀
I have an 8 core VM host which is run headless, literally everything, the host and the VMs are run remotely. Every server is run the same way.
One of my customers has a door access controller / club membership database that will only run in Win 7. That PC has just been replaced as it’s not up to running W10 very well, but it’s been kept (thoroughly isolated) to run said database and the customer does it via TightVNC. A lot easier than virtualization or KVM switches and the customer often forgets they aren’t sat in front of it.
I still think a Pi / upsquared is limiting but a refurbished ex corporate would be fine (and some). Looking on Ebuyer you can get a Xenta AMD 200GE 8GB RAM 240GB SSD Vega 3 for £203 plus a tenner for W10 from E-Bay.
December 23, 2019 at 12:46 pm #39088Forumite Points: 0The Ryzen does need to stay in the living room, so that VR gaming has the space to be played in, so it is the “office” box that needs to be the low powered remote in one.
The system is all ethernetted up, not using WiFi. I’ve been attempting to use Moonlight (Nvidia remote play system) and SteamLink for gaming. It works well for 1080p, but 4k it really doesn’t like sadly. I’m hoping that’s a limit of the box I have.
Does the VNC/RDP work well for gaming? I can imagine it’s fine for things like coding and browsing. If I could just rely on something simple like that, it’d be great. I’ll take a look at something more powerful. Thinking about it, I could try my old Desktop as that should be powerful enough just to prove that it’s the hardware and not the ethernet connection.
If that proves out, I’ll have a look at something like you recommend!
December 23, 2019 at 2:42 pm #39090There are known major issues with 4K+wifi usage in the Pi4B. According to this link there may be a fix.
Sorry about the b-awful auto screen/noises on this crappy ZDNet site!
If you are using wifi on the Pi you may be better using a dongle and wifi with external aerial. I noted a large drop-out rate with the internal wifi.
If you have lots of memory (you did change graphics memory I hope) then you may want to TRY reducing the swappiness.
sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=10
This is a contentious area with some saying it is a bad move. It helps me, so suck it and see.
December 24, 2019 at 8:14 am #39097OK, sorry I thought you were moving the Ryzen. What you actually want is to stream to the office? If so no, RDP / VNC won’t do it.
I would definitely be looking at something more powerful than a Pi type box and the 200GE seems to be shouting look at me. Further research points to checking what the motherboard can support HDMI wise too and may be dual channel ram. But as usual lots of conflicting “advice”.
One thing to remember is the Vega nicks 2GB of system ram so you need 8GB, which TBH is my standard these days anyway.
December 25, 2019 at 11:12 am #39124Forumite Points: 0@EdP, all is running over Ethernet, not WiFi. I have the 4gb version of the pi 4, I think I’ve given it 256Mb for the gpu. Why would decreasing swappyness help? Or is it too reduce premature swapping out?
@dave, that’s correct, stream to the office. The pi is able to do it just about at 1080, though I feel the mouse lagging but playing portal through it is fine. I’ll have a look at something more powerful, though I need to make sure it has Displayport out, not hdmi. Thanks 😊
December 25, 2019 at 3:55 pm #39127A lower swoppiness MAY help as it reduces load on the i/o bus. This can be important if the swap file/paging file sits on a slow device such as the SD card or a USB.
You may recollect when Bruce used to tout putting Linux on a stick that it was fairly dog-like until he decreased swoppiness. Its not a one way street as it is easy and safe to play with higher or lower values. I think the default is a quite high 60.
December 26, 2019 at 10:09 am #39136I think Displayport is going to be the sticking point as it’s seen as Corporate or Gaming.
The first mobo I can find with it is the £90 MSI Ryzen B450M MORTAR. However there are loads of refurbished HP 8200 Elite i5s about and they have a DP v1.1 port. MicroDream have a HP EliteDesk 800 G1 SFF Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz 8GB 500GB DVDRW WiFi Windows 10 Pro for £140
December 26, 2019 at 11:24 am #39138PS – High swoppiness is basically a server setting, low swoppiness is single user few tasks, and lowest for both single user and SSD (you want to minimise SSD swapping if possible).
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