I was having some dropped frame issues on my PC, and my phones video is pretty much unusable so I figured its probably a lack of hardware acceleration. Is it worth it to buy an Intel A380 which I’ve found for $120, or is it not worth it? For reference I currently have an i5 8600k and 16gb of RAM running Ubuntu Server headlessly.
I’ve wondered this too. I have a similar enough server and think it might be worth it, but it depends on what is causing your issues. Your 8600k should have a UHD630 in it and this forum post describes great 4k HDR transcoding performance.