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That itch to upgrade again - Ryzen 5 2600G?




Lately I've been collecting a lot of movies. Each week Maria and I set a small budget for personal "wants," much of mine has gone to DVDs and the occasional Blu-ray disc. I've been lucky to find some really great deals, but it's got to the point where I'm backed up because ripping all the media is taking more time than I have on evenings and weekends.

From what I've read ripping Blu-rays (unless you're also re-encoding them) is entirely dependent on the Blu-ray drive - there's little to be gained by upgrading to a new CPU/motherboard. I use a licensed copy of MakeMKV to rip my Blu-rays. Then I transfer the ripped mkv to our KODI machine and using HandbrakeCLI (the command-line version of Handbrake) to compress the large Blu-ray file to a smaller file. I could compress the file on my desktop, but my AMD A8-5600K APU doesn't have the same power as our KODI machine (which has an i7-2600 and is cooled with a Corsair H60 water cooler).

The real hold-up is ripping DVDs. Lately I've been trying to rip a number of collections. Here's a partial list of the backlog:

  • Magnum P.I. (all seasons)
  • Alias (season 1)
  • Homeland (season 5)
  • Corner Gas (season 3)
  • Family Guy (volumes 2 and 4)
  • The Shield (season 1)
  • Happy Days (season 1)
  • 50 Movie Pack - Warriors (50 movies across 13 dual-sided DVDs)
When I rip DVDs I use Handbrake. Some people rip using MakeMKV then as I do with Blu-rays encode with Handbrake (or HandbrakeCLI), but one advantage of ripping the DVDs with Handbrake is that I have a bit more control over the audio, subtitles and tagging of movies.

Ripping with Handbrake is partly dependent on the optical drive (ripping speed) but a lot more dependent on CPU power for the encoding portion of creating the file. This backup got me thinking about upgrading again.

A couple of months back I was looking at Intel processors, particularly because Intel processors have quick sync - a technology Handbrake can take advantage of to encode faster. The caveat to this is that in order to get quick sync working on Linux I would have to compile HandbrakeCLI from scratch with the experimental –enable-qsv switch. See the Handbrake quick sync documentation here for more information: https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/latest/technical/video-qsv-options.html

The more I looked at the latest AMD Ryzen 2nd generation processors the less sense Intel processors made. A Ryzen 5 2600 has really impressive CPU performance compared to my A8-5600K. For a raw CPU power comparison see this Passmark CPU comparison between the two processors: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/AMD-Ryzen-5-2600-vs-AMD-A8-5600K-APU/3243vs1449

It's not exactly comparing apples to apples since when the A8-5600K CPU was new it was slightly over $110CDN and the Ryzen 5 2600 is anywhere between $186 to $250 CDN depending on whether there's a sale or not and the source. Still this is an over 9,000 CPU mark difference. The Ryzen 5 2600 appears to be 4 times the CPU of my A8-5600K APU.

Please note: I buy DVDs and Blu-ray discs from a number of sources that includes buying some new. I keep all my discs and only encourage ripping for media you own.

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