I'm sure this has been discussed ad nauseum on this board. I'm looking to upgrade my process and would really appreciate if someone could help me with the following:

What type of processors works in the EX495 (QUAD Core 2011 or 2012)?
Do I need to upgrade the BIOS? If so, how?
What type RAM will it take (I want to upgrade to 4 gig)?
Will all my stored data be lost during the upgrade?
And I guess most importantly, Can someone point me in the direction of the DIRECTIONS on how to do this?

Thank you ahead of your response. I look forward to contributing to this forum however I can.

Rupedogg24

About what kind processor(s) will work? reference this thread
viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5512

No you don't need to upgrade the bios.

The following memory will get you to 4GB
Patriot Signature 4GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model PSD24G8002
Mushkin Enhanced Silverline 4GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model 991762

Data will still be there

Directions are on this forum, do a search

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EX 490 with 4GB of memory, E8400 and 8TB of drives.

For the cpu the top end would be the Q9550s. Big dollars if you can find one.
Note the s suffix.
It means a low power
Max TDP 65 W
Some people have used non S cpus and had success.
But what usually happens is the cpu gets to hot over the 65w threshold.
And the unit shuts down.
I found a oddball cpu. Q9450s and it works well on my ex490.
Bottom line is the S suffix cpus are pricy compared to standard units and hard to find.

_________________
VGA/PS2 Keyboard/PS2 Mouse/Serial debug board
Popcorn C-200
Popcorn A-200
Dune HD Connect
Rasberry PI OSMC(KODI)
ReadyNAS RN316
Amazon FireStick
Amazon ECHO
AnyDvD
MyMovies

Here's what is in mine. Works great for transcoding:

Thanks. I appreciate the response. Like I said I do a ton of transcoding of blu-ray and 3D blu-rays. I need something that can really handle what I throw at it. The ex495 came with 4gb of RAM so I don't think I need to upgrade there.

I wonder if anyone has thrown any quad-core CPUs in.

The EX495 came with 2gb of ram...same as EX490. Only difference was the CPU and the Primary OS drive between the EX490 and EX495

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EX 490 with 4GB of memory, E8400 and 8TB of drives.

How many BluRay movies can you watch in a day? You do sleep, and I assume you have a job and obviously your not watching BlueRay movie's while typing on the forum here.

See where I'm going?

I understand the geek thing to max out the box to the extreme, but the CPU I have is under $70 right now, and if you can find it the one or two low power quad cores that work are almost $300.

Your server can easily be up 7x24 - that's lots of computing cycles. And will your encoding software really utilize extra cores? Even most applications that are multi-threaded don't utilize multiple threads well (it's non-trivial and requires extra programming skill!). That's why Intel has their turbo boost feature where if one core is primarily busy they can boost the clock for that one core to get a real speed boost without going over thermally due to the other cores being basically idle.



As was pointed out, both the 495 and 490 came with 2GB - if your that heavily into transcoding, upgrade the RAM first or it won't matter if you shoehorn an 8 core CPU in there - the CPU cores will be starved for data as your server is busy trying to swap VM and feed your massive video files to the CPU.



Yes, some have - but the more desirable lower power version was always pretty rare and is now even more stupid-crazy expensive. You can cram the 90+ watt version in there, but expect potential heat problems and power supply problems. And maybe a cooked system drive (it's right above the CPU)

I have a quad core in mine and when PLEX is transcoding a movie all four cores are being utilized. The temps do get a little high but haven't gone above 75-80C during transcoding. When there is little to no load the temps are in the high 40's to low 50's. More than I would like but I haven't had any shutdowns. I do have my eye on a Q8400S to replace the non-S version but just haven't gotten around to getting it.

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HP MSS EX490, Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300, 1TB System drive, 6TB Storage pool managed by StableBit DrivePool

On my father's unit, I successfully installed a Q9550S. It ran with original cooling equipment. Although the main purpose was remote backup.