Shopping for new Intel APU

[yshi]

I'm considering upgrading my i5-6600k.

From what I can tell Ryzens are currently not suggested due to poor encoder performance, so I suppose it'll be another Intel.

Are there chips that should be avoided? I feel like I'd recently scrolled past news of Intel CPUs burning out or something for one reason or another.

Would some generations or specific models be better or worse? I'm currently using Docker on Debian 11, but might give openSUSE MicroOS a try with the new hardware free until it replaces. Sharing load with Nextcloud, Frigate/Home Assistant, Foundry at this point, not sure if any other potentially heavy loads to come.

Also, currently working with mini-ITX form factor.

[TheDreadPirate]

Some options to consider.

1) Just put in an Intel Arc GPU, change nothing else. This would improve transcoding massively. But you must upgrade to Debian 12 and use a BPO kernel (Arc requires kernel 6.2+). THe A310 and A380 have cards that come with half height brackets if your mini-ITX case can't accommodate a full height bracket.
2) If your storage is not locally attached, an Intel N100 based mini PC like the Beelink S12. Super low power, but still has an excellent encoder.
3) Depending on your motherboard, you could also upgrade to a 7000 series Intel CPU, which have HEVC 10-bit support for HDR tone mapping support. You wouldn't need to upgrade the board, memory, etc.

Regardless of your hardware choice, I'd stick with a Debian/Ubuntu based OS. RPM based OSes, like OpenSuse, are not officially supported. RPM packages are community built and usually lag behind official releases. But it sounds like you're using docker, so that limitation may not apply.

[yshi]

Thanks for the feedback.

1. My single socket is occupied by a PCIe>NVMe adaptee for bcache for the 5400RPM NAS disks still in use.
2. Five SATA disks with an NVMe cache in the box, and it's used for a number of other servers, so I don't want to downgrade power from where I am already.
3. I'll dig up the model in the morning to see what it supports, but I'm thinking a refresh might be good at this point.

I think the container uses a Debian base, so the host OS shouldn't matter.

[TheDreadPirate]

For containers, the host OS does matter since the container uses the host OS's kernel. VMs have their own kernel.