Post by @njordomir@lemmy.world

2026-11-01 07:34 UTC

What should I replace the GTX 1080s in my server with? As part of my Homelab, I have TrueNAS Community Edition running in a big case with a bunch of Frankenstein parts including two GTX 1080s. TrueNAS recently phased out support for these older cards and I’ve been having to go through and manually install working drivers, which seem to have gotten overwritten on the last update anyway. Since I’m not actually using anything for video output (and have onboard HDMI if needed). One of the cards I am passing through to a VM (where it has no problem being recognized and used). The other card was used by Truenas for my apps. Do you have any recommendations for hardware to accelerate tasks like Immich, Jellfin transcoding, media fingerprinting for metadata, OCR on bulk-uploaded pdfs etc.? I was never really a hardware guy, especially when it comes to self-hosting and servers. I don’t want to play games on my server. I don’t want to empty my accounts to put a 5090 TI in a server. The above tasks are too slow on CPU alone, so I have to put something in it. I could keep running the 1080s with manually installed drivers, but it’s a PITA and I wouldn’t mind not doing that. Are there reasonable options that can take up the workload, but come in at a decent price point? I know with a server, I don’t necessarily have to run the same stuff as gamers. Are there options outside of the typical NVIDIA and AMD gaming linups that would work for my purpose, perhaps acquirable via FB marketplace, Craigslist, etc.? Does your server have video acceleration and, if so, what hardware are you using? I appreciate any guidance the community can give me.

Replies (7)

@coolie4@lemmy.world 2026-11-01 07:43

I’ve never used TrueNAS and don’t know how your infrastructure is set up, so I have no idea how difficult migration would be, but switching to a different OS that supports your cards would be free. Could look into Incus or Proxmox.

Open ##5503746
@monotux@hachyderm.io 2026-11-01 07:56

@njordomir@lemmy.world before prices became crazy, the Intel A310 was a pretty interesting card for transcoding. It might still be worth it - does 12 bit, AV1 and sips power.

Open ##5503906
@CameronDev@programming.dev 2026-11-01 07:56

Rtx3050? Should be supported for a little while, and seems to be around $300AUD. Probably still overkill for a NAS though.

Open ##5503917
@thelittleblackbird@lemmy.world 2026-11-01 08:08

For best performance vs cost Intel graphics cards are a good deal, specially since Intel is the standard for things like transcoding. But keep in mind that their drivers are not up to the level of the others although they are improving. But unless you are levering a serious level of cuda processing, honestly any card that is 5 years old will cost just a few hundreds and it will outperform the 2 cards together for transcoding / media processing. But newer cards will dot it with a fraction of the energy (always keep an eye on that…)

Open ##5504259
@Lurker1347@fedinsfw.app 2026-11-01 07:54

I’m not sure about AMD but for Nvidia it can matter which generation of NVENC and NVDEC chips you have, as well as the number of them. Myself, I use the P400 which is pretty much a 1050. If you don’t need to update the drivers per se for it to work I would suggest freezing updates. Drivers won’t change anything about the raw GPU power anyway. They usually just fix game compatibility. https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-support-matrix

Open ##5504682
@Ptsf@lemmy.world 2026-11-01 08:38

You can lock unsupported drivers from being wiped at each upgrade, but I can highly recommend intel cards if you’re looking to switch to something with less maintenance. Irsov works a charm and they’re decent value for the money.

Open ##5504755
@teawrecks@sopuli.xyz 2026-11-01 21:29

What does it mean that TrueNAS phased out support? Does that mean the proprietary drivers dropped support, and your TrueNAS is using those? Can you switch to open drivers?

Open ##5513670