I am using a brand new Sparkle A310 under TrueNAS 25.04 (also tested 24.10) with the official Plex app through TrueNAS. It seems to work just fine, except when I open intel_gpu_top to gather any statistics on the GPU load. Within 1 to 5 seconds, the entire system locks up with only an occasional monitor video flicker of the TrueNAS CLI menu. There is no kernel panic displayed on the console.
I’m wondering if my GPU is defective. Can anyone else confirm transcoding with an A310 (or any Arc GPU) and running intel_gpu_top actually works? If I had never run that command, I’d think this GPU is fine, but now I’m not so sure. I can’t find anyone else reporting it and it happens with two different major TrueNAS releases.
I’m running that exact card in my daughters NAS. It’s running Jellyfin rather than Plex but I just confirmed that while playing/transcoding, I can run intel_gpu_top without issue.
Without testing it on a fresh install, it’s tough to rule out software/driver issue but my gut says you got a bad card.
BTW, it’s a great card for this use case with the one down side being the horrible fan control in the vbios. That damn thing endlessly ramps up and down. I did flash this card to the latest vbios and it helped SOME but not fully. Hopefully there will be fan control available in Linux soon so resolve that.
I am also running the Sparkle A310 eco and just like @Erick_Gruis I use it for Jellyfin transcoding which does work at the same time as intel_gpu_top.
As he mentioned you should update the GPUs firmware (I linked a method here and others also described how they did it) - in you case I would even recommend it if you currently don’t have any fan issues.
If transcoding works fine until you start intel_gpu_top I don’t think your hardware is actually bad (although I also don’t know why a driver/software error of that kind would only show up for you).
