You may want to check that your Xeon may already support hardware encoding of AV1 in the iGPU. I saved a bundle building a media server when I realized the iGPU was more than sufficient (and more efficient) than chucking a GPU in the case.
I have a service that runs continuously and reencodes any videos I have into h265 and the iGPU barely even notices it.
Looks like Core Ultra is the only chip with integrated Arc GPU with AV1 encode. The Xeon series I was looking at, the 1700 socket so the e2400s, definitely don't have iGPU. (The fact that the motherboard I'm looking at only has VGA is probably a clue xD)
I'll have to consider pros and cons with Ultra chips, thanks for the tip.
I have a service that runs continuously and reencodes any videos I have into h265 and the iGPU barely even notices it.